One of the many reasons I’m so grateful for “Hidden Figures,” Theodore Melfi’s terrific movie about three African-American women who made integral contributions to the U.S. space program, is that the film provides a powerful reminder of just how much it’s possible to do within the confines of a handsome period piece about race. Certain artistic forms persist for a reason.
And in telling a story about a federal agency challenged to make use of the talent it had on hand, no matter the gender or color of the people who possessed it, “Hidden Figures” issues a striking challenge to the entertainment industry itself. The pleasures and arguments of “Hidden Figures” are no less – and maybe even a bit more – for coming in a conventional package.
One of the smartest decisions director Melfi and his co-writer Allison Schroeder make in “Hidden Figures” is to start the story once math prodigy Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), who supervises the black women who work as “computers,” and aspiring engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) have already begun working at NASA, dropping us into the flow of their warm banter.
It’s not as if the movie needs to do a lot of work to make us like these three engaging women. But it’s still a delight to watch them make biting jokes about their commuting options – Dorothy’s unreliable car, or the back of the bus – or to see the eagerness with which Mary and Dorothy set up the widowed Katherine with the dashing Col. Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali) at a church picnic. “Please, have some shame,” Katherine hisses at Mary when she smiles in Jim’s direction. “I will not,” Mary shoots back at her.
And this timing also pays off in the film’s sophisticated treatment of sexism and racism. “Hidden Figures” is too wise to believe that the battle for equality ends when women of color get hired.
Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), Katherine’s boss at the Space Task Group, is quick to accept her work. But he’s blind to the conditions that make her job more difficult: the embarrassment of a “Colored” coffee pot that suddenly appears in the office; a dress code that limits her to a single string of pearls as jewelry; the fact that, as a woman, she doesn’t have a wife to pick up the slack at home when Al arbitrarily increases her hours but not her pay; the way her colleague Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) constantly denies Katherine information, forcing her to redo complicated calculations.
“I put a lot of faith in you,” Al tells Katherine, grouchily, when she returns to the office one afternoon, soaking wet and late from a dash to the only bathroom she’s allowed to use in the whole complex. “There are no colored bathrooms here, or anywhere except the West campus,” she breaks down, cataloging the insults for him. “I don’t own pearls. You don’t pay coloreds enough to afford pearls. And I work like a dog living off a pot of coffee the rest of you don’t want to touch.”
In a blunter movie, Al’s next moves would seal him as a good, redeemed white person: He takes the “Colored” sticker off the coffee pot and knocks down the “Colored Ladies” sign, saying that at NASA, “we’re all the same color.” But the work continues: Katherine has to push him to admit her to important meetings, and he invites her in to watch John Glenn (Glen Powell) orbit Earth only after a door is slammed in her face. Equality is a process, not a destination.
Gender doesn’t magically erase the divisions of color, either. Ruth, Al’s assistant, alternately supports Katherine and undermines her. One minute, she reminds Al that Katherine can do the analytic geometry he needs, as well as speak for herself. The next, Ruth is refusing to help Katherine find a ladies room.
Vivian Michael (Kirsten Dunst), the white woman who supervises all of the female computers, relies on fine print and a honeyed tone of voice to undermine the black women she supervises. She rejects Mary from an engineering training program on the grounds that she lacks required classes taught in segregated institutions and feigns uncertainty to deny Dorothy a promotion to supervisor.
Ultimately, “Hidden Figures” makes a case for inclusion that’s not rooted in aesthetics or niceness. Instead, the movie argues that NASA needed Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson because, in the words of that police officer, “We got to get a man up there before those Commies do,” and NASA couldn’t have done it without their singular talents and determination. Equality isn’t a matter of corporate branding or self-righteousness: It’s the only way to make sure that organizations and countries don’t miss out on genius. If Hollywood looks at the work that Henson, Spencer, Monáe, Ali and Hodge do in “Hidden Figures” and gets that message, too, that would be awfully nice and embarrassingly overdue.
Hidden Figures
(Playing at Stadium 9)
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama
Directed by: Ted Melfi
Written by: Allison Schroeder, Ted Melfi
Runtime: 2 hr. 7 min.
Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer: 92%
