Figures a timely thrill
Dorothy Vaughan (the brilliant Octavia Spencer who won an Oscar for The Help), and the sassy Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae, whose breakthrough roles in this film and Moonlight should make 2017 a life-changing year), Goble is tenacious in the face of ignorance and prejudice.
As Goble goes up against the white male scientists headed by a terrific Kevin Costner (as at home in this era as he was in JFK) there are A Beautiful Mind moments of chalkboard equations and much talk of trajectories and ‘‘Go/No go’’ tests, but crucially the science is neatly explained so that lay audiences can understand without the characters seeming to dumb it down for us. (To the filmmakers’ credit, and the relief of scientific viewers, it’s also bang-on.)
The extent to which certain events may have been slightly fictionalised or exaggerated is impossible to know, but what matters is the over-arching narrative of progress against the odds, with the underlying background of racial discrimination and inequality.
The most compelling scenes are those where our protagonists stand up in the face of a segregation that is as hurtful as it is subtle (in particular, Goble’s reproach of a system that forces her to run half a mile to the Colored Restroom is desperately moving), and to realise this was happening only 50 years ago and that contemporary America could turn on a dime to revert to such hatred in 2017, is just as horrifying.
Occasionally light-hearted in a manner that inevitably evokes movies like The Help (with which this has been compared), Hidden Figures is an eyeopener into a side of segregated America most viewers will not have seen, and an immensely likeable underdog story.
But while there are moments of high tension as astronauts are launched into space and calculations are completed at the 11th hour, the film excels in its more personal moments – when the impact of inequality on human lives is laid bare.
Thrilling, moving, and empowering, Hidden Figures is a timely tale, beautifully told. – Sarah Watt