Women wrestle gravity, racism and sexism
Hidden Figures (out of 4) Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Mahershala Ali, Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons. Directed by Theodore Melfi. Opens Sunday at the Varsity. 127 minutes. PG
The recent death of John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, was a reminder of how heroism is all too often attributed to the visible.
Hidden Figures tells the inspirational story of noteworthy unseen heroes behind Glenn’s feat: three black female mathematicians who had to wrestle not just with gravity, but also racism and sexism, to help America beat the Soviet Union in the 1960s space race.
Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe serve both history and the demands of popular entertainment with serious performances that also have a good sense of humour.
The comic aspect of the tale is very much a preoccupation of Theodore Melfi, a director and screenwriter (with TV’s Allison Schroeder). Melfi may be better suited to the big characters and broad strokes of his Bill Murray vehicle, Saint Vincent, than to something like this, which on the face of it should be a drama, not a comedy.
What’s on view here is more the America of sitcom mirth than documentary exposé. Matters of racial intolerance seem to come down to segregated washrooms and coffee pots, rather than some of the era’s more violent confrontations. Pharrell Wil- liams’ pop soundtrack is far from fistwaving, and a character notes in passing that “civil rights ain’t always so civil.”
Tonal quibbles aside, Hidden Figures succeeds mightily in saluting the work of Taraji P. Henson’s lead character, Katherine Johnson, now 98, whose math skills were so legendary that before Glenn would suit up for his mission, he insisted she check all the computations of the early IBM computers NASA was using.
Johnson is a figure of stoic determination, a single mom of three young daughters, whose abilities with a pencil and slide rule bring her to the attention of Al Harrison (Kevin Costner, gruffly engaging), head of the Space Task Group that must get America into the cosmos.
“Come up with a solve,” he instructs when inevitable setbacks occur. The intrepid Johnson is up for the challenge, with assists from her friends and fellow math whizzes, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson ( Moonlight’s Janelle Monáe).
Harrison is a good guy, if a little distracted. The other members of his team are less virtuous; they’re petty tyrants played by Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons ( The Big Bang Theory). They’re more interested in upholding the white status quo than they are with putting Glenn into space.
But this is neither a movie nor a history lesson where the villains triumph.
It’s the unseen heroes who do, working to the mantra of their principled boss, Harrison: “We all get to the peak together or we don’t get there at all.”