Hidden Figures - A Review

I remember watching this film a couple years ago. I knew very little about the space program, simply because all I learnt in History classes were that the United States and the Soviet Union were in another battle throughout the Cold War: the space race. What I didn't know was that instrumental to the American successes were the works of very specific women in the space program, all of whom were African-American. In a time of segregation, the success of Black women was often ignored, sometimes even claimed by White workers. The film was based on a non-fiction biography about these three women: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. Theodore Melfi adapted the biography into a dramatisation. These three women present different stories and experiences, and depiction of which allows the audience to get a glimpse of what racial and gender discrimination in the early 1960s was like.

Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson, played by Taraji P. Henson, was a mathematician and a computer who was involved in calculating trajectories and launch windows for various space programs with NASA. Her work was instrumental in planning paths for Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. The film depicts Katherine as a soft-spoken mathematician, but with a sharp tongue. Easily she was the most compelling character out of the three women. She kept her head down and did what she needed to do, but when push came to shove, she didn't hold back. In one particular scene, she finally lashes out at her new boss because she is required to run several miles to a different campus just so that she can use the segregated bathrooms for ethnic minorities. This was probably the most iconic scene of the film, and an excellent soliloquy delivered by Henson: "There is no bathroom. There are no colored bathrooms in this building. Or any building outside the West Campus, which is half a mile away. Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself, and I can't use one of the handy bikes. Picture that, Mr. Harrison. My uniform. Skirt below my knees, my heels, and a simple string of pearls. Well, I don't own pearls. Lord knows you don't pay coloreds enough to afford pearls! And I work like a dog, day and night, living off of coffee from a pot none of you want to touch! So, excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day." Honestly, you could hear a pin drop with that monologue.

Throughout the film, Katherine does a series of calculations to either predict certain coordinates or to confirm the calculations others have done. When presenting these calculations, she faces the complication of whose name is published on the front. Even though several are her own work, her colleague, Paul Stafford, takes the credit for it as he supervises her work. When she attempts to put both their names down, he rebukes her, saying that "computers don't author reports." This relationship between Katherine and Paul is particularly significant in demonstrating the development of what kind of mentality exists at NASA. By the end of the film, not only does Paul accept her name on future reports, he happily provides her with coffee from the same pot, allowing equality and integration to take root.

Dorothy Vaughan

Dorothy's story is perhaps the weakest in the film, in my opinion. Her influence on the space programs nor her character development is not as pronounced as Katherine's or Mary's. However, there is much to learn from the way she is depicted. At the beginning of the film, she is seen as the leader of the West Area Computers, taking charge as a supervisor. However, her antagonist, Mrs. Mitchell, frequently reminds Dorothy that she is not a supervisor even if the group needs one and if she has ordered Dorothy take on the role. Unlike Katherine and Mary, she does attain any promotion until the end of the film, which she earns as a result of taking initiative to explore the new IBM electronic computer. Thanks to some research, she is able to resolve the issues the other engineers faced, allowing the machine to work properly. This earns the respect of Mrs. Mitchell, who begins to call her "Mrs. Vaughan" to acknowledge the authority Dorothy now holds, and ultimately works to promote Dorothy to the role of supervisor of the Programming Department. This department is also demonstrative of racial integration that starts to take place in the early 1960s, which made a for a nice ending. That all being said, unless I missed something, I just didn't see the point in Dorothy's story in relation to the space program. She was an excellent programmer and mathematician, but her story could easily have been in any industry that involved such skills. 

Mary Jackson

Mary's story probably has the most nuance to her personality, and she was probably my favourite character of the film. Assertive but compassionate, Mary had a certain drive that I admired. From what I read about the real Mary Jackson, the film did dramatise her story somewhat for plot purposes. For example, she started working with the engineering department as early as 1953, but the film suggests she only started with them in 1961; even one of the leading engineers of this group has a different character, switching from the real-life Kazimierz Czarnecki to the fictionalised Karl Zielinski. However, the changes she goes through while maintaining the same personality is to be admired. She learns that in order to take up a more senior engineering role, she is required to possess an engineering degree, which she cannot earn in Virginia as the only classes available to her are in a segregated school. Yet she manages to convince the local judge to accept her case, allowing her to attend the school. Being the wife of a civil rights activist, she is opinionated and outspoken, which Katherine and Dorothy frequently remind can cause her to get into trouble. Instead of backing down, she uses her tenacity to her advantage and challenges her peers to go up and beyond. The film states that she became NASA's and America's first female African-American aeronautical engineer. One thing I admired about her character was that she didn't believe in simply making her ethnic group advance further; the film does show that she is supporter of seeing people of all backgrounds as equal regardless of whether they are white or black.

For all my political views, which - if you know - are somewhat controversial in today's political climate, I love films about empowerment. It's not because of the feminist movement or moves to promote equality, I just love empowerment films. They're uplifting and inspire one to be bold. They push you to use what skills you have to improve yourself. The world can be against you, but with the right amount of ambition, one can see all that as noise and move on.