Chris At The Pictures

It’s the early 1960s, and the civil rights movement is taking flight. A march is taking place that will forever decide the future of the United States, a march where an oppressed minority will rise up and demand better. However, this isn’t Martin Luther King leading the long walk from Selma to Montgomery; this is Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) leading her fellow mathematicians from their segregated ‘colored’ section of the Langley campus to the main building. It’s a shorter, swifter journey but every bit as important, and forms the defining posture Hidden Figures, which tells the previously obscured story of the black women (mathematicians, scientists, engineers) who were pivotal to the early victories of the US space programme.

Director Theodore Melfi adapts Margot Lee Shetterly’s book, focusing on three of these women: maths whizz Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), aspiring engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and the aforementioned Vaughan, denied supervisor role in her workplace by a white overseer (Kirsten Dunst). The film is sold as the struggle of ‘the women you don’t know behind the mission you do’, but as someone who wasn’t even that knowledgeable about the story hiding Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson from view, the impact was doubly felt. The separate strands of struggling minorities and an eyes-skyward approach to the future intertwine fantastically, with the latter never outshining the former.

I’m not about to go all poster-quote and say the performances are particularly nuanced or layered, because this is a film that realises that simplicity and sometimes predictability are necessary paths. However, they are completely believable, and utterly brilliant. Spencer’s years of experience provides the rightful guiding hand, Monaé gives us a constant reminder of the barriers placed upon African-American women at the time (as Mary battles for the right to study), and a new star in the skies of Hollywood. Henson takes centre stage as the first of the trio to break through into a higher field: Katherine is the only person of her colour in the highest offices of NASA, reporting directly to Kevin Costner as a fair but firm director. Despite her incredible achievements, she is still forced to make a forty minute to-and-from her segregated bathroom and given a separate coffee pot to her white male colleagues. Henson handles the central role with grace and ferocity, enough to keep Costner and a surprisingly strong Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) on their toes.

It's difficult to imagine that Costner’s role was too much of a stretch for him, and it’s his character (a collection of several other people fused together for the sake of narrative ease) that feels the most like a concession to white audiences, to prevent accusations of bias (a bit rich, if you ask me). Mahershala Ali appears from time-to-time, too: if you accomplish nothing else in life, find someone who looks at you as adoringly as he looks at literally everyone in this film.

A scattering of critics have picked holes in what they see as a lack of technical prowess. Not only have they clearly missed the point, but they’re also just plain wrong; there’s some stellar work going on, formally. Hans Zimmer delivers his least intrusive score in years (allowing Pharrell to take most of the heavy-lifting), and Mandy Walker sneaks a handful of really great compositions into the cinematography. Characters stand behind glass panes or converse across mirrors, divided by window frames or other barriers that are every bit as thin and easily breakable as their fragile racial divides.

Also, perhaps it’s not showily constructed because (shock horror), the director is more interested in building characters and highlighting adversity than effects-heavy rocket porn? Melfi is doing what any good ally of people of colour should do: using their privileged access to these tools to tell a tale that wouldn’t otherwise be seen, but stepping back to allow that story and its message to speak clearly. “Civil rights ain’t always civil,” admits Jackson’s husband, but Hidden Figures is. Certainly, it never shies away from stark images of persecution and shocking ignorance, but it does so with its head held high, safe in the knowledge that any right-thinking person is on its side and smiling wryly in unison.

This is a story told affectionately; sentimental without being cheesy, inspirational without a roll of the eyes. Even if the wonderful cast, prescient message and triumphant spirit wasn’t enough to make it infectiously enjoyable, the fact we’re even getting an awards season movie starring three black women is a reason to smile. It’s a shockingly overdue smile, occasionally brought on by reliance on cliché, but, as Harrison says; “Progress is a double-edged sword”