HIDDEN FIGURES (2016) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Theodore Melfi
Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae,
Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons
Most of us probably don't think much about the civil-rights movement and the space race being integral to each other, but they did share a timeline through the '50s and '60s, a period when, as the saying goes, shit happened. This movie tells the story of three black women, mathematicians working for NASA around the time of the first manned space flights. It's a movie that gets the period right, from the NASA techs in their uniform white shirts and narrow ties to the rabbit ears on the television sets to Kevin Costner's government-issue eyeglasses. More significant is the way it captures the inherent racism of the time, when overt segregation was still pervasive (though not necessarily legal) and even NASA had separate restroom facilities for its colored workers. All three women run into that wall. For Dorothy (Octavia Spencer), it's being passed over for a job she's already doing. For Mary (Janelle Monae), it's a night class she needs to take at a high school that still bars blacks. For Katherine (Taraji P.Henson), it's not being able to put her own name on the papers she's initiating, researching and writing. It helps that they're all brilliant, but if they weren't also to varying degrees persistent and assertive, they'd never get anywhere in a system designed to limit and contain them. That they were successful is a tribute to their heroism and tenacity in the face of prohibitive odds. A mind, to recycle another old saying, is a terrible thing to waste.
