Hidden Figures

The Go/No Go Point
or
"Let's Have an 'Amen', Dammit!"

Hidden Figures is one of those movies you can't fault, even while you're muttering "BS" under your breath. Its "untold" story (too true, unfortunately) of the "computer with skirts" unit (true) at the Langley Research Center at the behest of NASA, it both makes things too easy to digest for audiences to the point of incredulity and compresses the timeline to an unbelievable degree. Rather than the early 1960's as the film portrays, these women were making their accomplishments starting in the late 1940's: when Dorothy Vaughan—portrayed by Octavia Spencer in the film—actually did become the first black supervisor of the computer team in 1948, back when NASA was still known as NACA; Mary Jackson—portrayed by Janelle Monae—became an engineer in 1958; and, most egregiously, Katherine Johnson—portrayed by Taraji P. Henson—started work at Langley in 1953, was "loaned out" to NASA and they never let her go, and yes, she was the "go-to" woman for calculating trajectories from the first sub-orbital space shots, through all the Moon landings and on to the Space Shuttle program. The film seriously short-changes these amazing women for dramatic purposes.

Not only that, the film over-dramatizes and even invents instances of racial injustice to make its point of "overcoming obstacles." Oh, these women had obstacles, all right. But, they were too smart and just plain too good to deal with such silliness. They didn't make a point of it. They just ignored it and resisted it and let their behavior dictate the status quo. "Excellence is always the best deterrent to racism or sexism" somebody said* and you did not mess with these women in the work-place. But, the film invents characters that are "indicative of the prejudice of the time" (portrayed by Jim Parsons and Kirsten Dunst) as foils to be overcome. Plus, Kevin Costner's "Al Harrison" never existed, being a composite of several directors of the "Space Task Force" who had the privilege of working with these women.

So, I chortled when John Glenn (Glen Powell) gets a call on the launch-pad from Katherine Johnson giving him the coordinates for the "Go/No Go" point to fire the retro-rockets to return to Earth (she's giving him coordinates down to many decimal places after their IBM computer starts giving differing numbers and he doesn't even have anything to write them down!), but it is true that when that issue came up, Glenn said (and I quote) "Get 'the girl' to check the numbers. If she says the numbers are good, I'm ready to go." Wow. "The girl" was more trusted than the NASA computers and all the other technicians at NASA and Glenn was willing to risk his life being hurled into space by what was previously a ballistic missile on Katherine Johnson's say-so. 

So, even if the movie does somewhat undercut what they did, making a movie about them was drastically necessary and long overdue. Long held has been the image of white guys in shirts and ties, smoking over metal rheostats and gauges (nobody smokes, although Costner's Harrison is an incessant gum-chewer as a compensation). Performances are first-rate throughout (although Parsons may be a bit type-cast as a 'nerdlinger" at this point—he never goes full-"Sheldon" in this): Spencer is subtly fierce in this and Monae is a delight, and Henson (who I'd watch reading the phone-book, which was something not out of place for the time-period) is tamped down from what she can do—it's a bit like watching Jane Fonda in 9 to 5, deliberately "playing nice" when you know, deep-down, she's fighting the urge to put some "edge" to it.

Hidden Figures is a charmer, even if it doesn't quite achieve the heights it should. 

* I know it's Oprah and you don't get a car for knowing it.