Hidden Figures – Movie Review
Hidden Figures – PG
Release Date: Fri 06 Jan 2017
Hidden Figures is based on the true stories of African-American women helping NASA with groundbreaking mathematics in the early 1960’s space missions.
The film focuses on Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) – a gifted mathematician tasked with checking the computations of the launch and recoveries, Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) – a supervisor in all but name leading NASA’s “colored computers” group of female mathematicians, and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) a computer with designs on becoming an engineer despite NASA’s college requirements being unattainable by black students.
The racial divide in Hidden Figures permeates every scene. Katherine’s ridiculous mile round-trip to the only colored women’s restroom on the premises becomes a boiling point that starts changes, but both before and after that the racism of segregation is an unspoken but bitter reality. This helps the authenticity of the storytelling as people don’t take on caricatures of the flawlessly oppressed or the cartoonishly oppressive.
Hidden Figures is a great recommendation for it’s history, the excitement of the early space race, and the fantastic acting, directing and execution of a very interesting story. It’s a PG-rated movie that will entertain anyone willing to buy a ticket.
Amber, Aaron and I saw it in the theater and had a discussion in the car:
