Directed by: Theodore Melfi
Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner
Rated PG, 127 minutes
It was only a slip of the tongue, but when Jenna Bush Hager, interviewing Pharrell Williams about his Golden Globe nomination for the music of “Hidden Figures,” erroneously called the film “Hidden Fences” (conflating it with the Denzel Washington–directed “Fences”), she succinctly demonstrated the importance of films like “Hidden Figures.” It was the Hollywood equivalent of a teacher calling a black student by another black student’s name, and it might have gone unnoticed if Michael Keaton hadn’t then made the same blunder onstage while listing the best supporting actress nominees. On such a high-profile scale, the mistake was particularly embarrassing, but revealing moments like these are partly why “Hidden Figures” was made.
The true story of black female human computers at NASA during the space race, “Hidden Figures” follows three friends working on the Mercury program to put US astronauts in space for the first time. Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer, “The Help”), the maternal leader of the group and the de facto supervisor of the black computing team, yearns for a formal promotion, while Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, “Moonlight”), young and fiery, hopes to fill an open engineering position; both women face stiff prejudices. But the core member of the group is Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson, TV’s “Empire”), placed on the task group in charge of manned launches, a team whose work has life-and-death consequences. Her boss, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner, “Dances with Wolves”), is a no-nonsense workaholic dead-set on beating the Soviets to space, so his team runs at a fast pace, with little sympathy for anyone out of his—or her—element. With the Soviets one step ahead and a young astronaut named John Glenn waiting to go into orbit, Katherine constantly has to prove her intellectual worth. As she and her friends learn every step of the way, no one will respect their work without irrefutable proof.
A cast filled with familiar faces helps bring the stories of these three women to life. Spencer shines as the crafty but nurturing Vaughan, while Monáe, fresh off a similar turn in “Moonlight,” is proving herself worthy of a larger role somewhere. Henson, trusted to carry the film, faces the toughest task, given her character’s meekness, but despite a few visible cracks (for instance, there is little buildup before a big outburst midway through, making the scene more distracting than cathartic), it’s easy to root for her and admire her obvious intelligence. Meanwhile, a gaggle of appropriately white-bread supporting actors (Kevin Costner, Jim Parsons, Kirsten Dunst) reflect the discomfort of mid-century white Americans seeing their workplaces integrated, and a bit part by Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”) as Goble’s suitor helps us see her self-confidence blossoming. It’s almost a shame to see such an impressive cast in a movie that, despite its timeliness, is fairly predictable.
A feel-good movie from the start, the film traffics in familiar tropes: nonsensical math jargon, equations hastily scribbled on chalkboards, radio bulletins narrating famous world events, nonbelievers left speechless upon being proved wrong, and even a dramatic courtroom speech. These cliches come with the territory, of course, but they are distracting when used in abundance. The novelty of the movie, though, is that it expresses the impact these recognizable plot points have on black women and their lives, and this distinction merits praise. Representation matters, and “Hidden Figures” shows that black women should benefit from the same feel-good movie formulas as anybody else.
But “Hidden Figures” isn’t just a story meant to inspire those who have waited for Hollywood to tell the stories of minorities (although, as the box office indicates, the movie is having no trouble with that). It’s also a firm-footed condemnation of complacency. The most telling moment comes as Kirsten Dunst’s character, restrained by protocols and precedents and thus unable to grant Vaughan the promotion she wants, tries to tell Vaughan that it’s nothing personal. Vaughan smiles back and says, “I know you probably believe that.” Nothing is hidden on its own, of course. The film asks its audience, well meaning and sympathetic as it may be, to reflect on its own part in concealing the lives and accomplishments of minorities, and it suggests, with a timely wink toward U.S.-Russia tensions, that the country needs every bit of help it can get. We’d do well to see that, and soon.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 1/27/17.