Black History Month film: Hidden Figures
Theodore Melfi, 2016, USA, Colour, English, 127 mins, Certificate: PG
History, written by (white) men, has consistently erased, silenced, or altered beyond recognition the stories of consequential women.
Particularly those of women of colour.
Like the – against all odds – monumental achievements of Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, the three black mathematicians, without whom (white) men would have never reached the stars and travel back to Earth safely to tell the tale.
But this is not a documentary. This is a based on an incredible true story, fiction film.
An armed with not one, but two, rarely so apt and inspiring taglines, film: “Meet the women you don’t know, behind the mission you do.” “ Genius has no race. Strength has no gender. Courage has no limit.”
A nominated for 3 Oscars (Best Picture, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay), thoughtful, tender, joyful, wonderfully suspenseful and highly entertaining, reserved but sharp in its activism, graced with three magnetic central performances, (by the ever luminous Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe), and an enviable supporting cast, (Kevin Coster, Kirsten Dunst, Mahershala Ali, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell), film.
It will open your eyes, lift your spirits, stir your emotions, start conversations, and point you to the right direction in uncovering these women’s rightful place in History.
Reviews:
“Hidden Figures benefits from a tale few know, with a trio of leading characters almost nobody has heard of and… a total absence of solemnity. This is something of a surprise: Hidden Figures’s other great asset is that although it looks like a movie machine-tooled to ride the wave of #OscarsSoWhite backlash, its actual ambitions seem far more modest: to entertain a lot, to educate a bit and to cheerlead pretty much constantly.” Catherine Shoard, The Guardian
“Even if some details have been massaged to fit the template of a Hollywood crowd-pleaser, the main thrust of the story is true and all the more remarkable for that. What’s more important is that Melfi has captured all the grit and grace, as well as the brilliance, of his three female protagonists, who have been honoured very late in their lives for their contribution to the Space Race.” Stella Papamichael, Radio Times
“In the grand scheme, numbers mean everything… Yet movies about people who deal in numbers… tend to be deadly dull. Hidden Figures, both a dazzling piece of entertainment and a window into history, bucks the trend of the boring-math-guy movie… It’s something else to bask in the movie’s spirit. [It] is buoyant and alert every minute. Henson, Spencer and Monáe all give superb performances: Watching them is pure pleasure… Katherine’s (Henson) drive has a specific and pointed context here: Numbers have no color, and no gender, either… Hidden Figures brings that stealth triumph into the light, one number at a time.” Stephanie Zacharek, Time
““Hidden Figures” provides a fresh angle on how demeaning, demoralizing and crazy it was to live in an era of officially sanctioned white supremacy… Yet [it] is a triumphant and heartwarming film, not an angry and scolding one, that carefully maps how excellence and determination win over the doubters. A gruff-but-open-minded supervisor (Kevin Costner) who learns of the bathroom hassle takes a crowbar to the sign reading “Colored Ladies Room.” “We pee one color here,” he says.” Kyle Smith, New York Post