Hidden Figures
Director: Theodore Melfi
Stars: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe
Duration: 127 mins
Class: PG
KRS Releasing Ltd

With the technology available at our fingertips that we take so much for granted – be it in our smartphones or in the most complex computers being used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), it is always fascinating to see how, 60 years ago, the agency managed to get people into space as the space race unfolded between the US and the USSR.

NASA did have computers, obviously – humungous machines the size of entire rooms – and these came to play an important part in landing a man on the moon in 1969. Yet, years earlier, these machines were preceded literally by human computers – and they were called computers – and many of these were extraordinarily gifted African-American women. For the most part, they were working segregated from their white colleagues, earning lower salaries and enjoying fewer perks. Yet, the work contributed by these women was vital in the American’s success over their Soviet counterparts.

It’s an aspect to the space race in the late 1950s and early 1960s that is little-known – but thanks to the superb Hidden Figures, these women have finally been brought out of the shadows.

The film focuses on three particular women – Katherine Johnson (Taraji P Henson), a mathematics prodigy who was raising three children on her own while working at NASA, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) who graduated from college aged 19 and was previously a Maths teacher and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), who joined Nasa with degrees in Physical Science and Mathematics and went on to become an Aerospace Engineer.

Full of heart, often droll, and brims with enthusiastic performances

The film is a celebration of their achievements, all the more so because this took place at a time when the civil rights movement was still in its infancy.

The scene is established quickly as a flashback to Johnson’s childhood shows how her extraordinary mathematical genius was noticed and she was sent to a school for gifted children. Fast forward a few years and she and her colleagues are heading for work when their car breaks down.

They become anxious when a police officer pulls up and is immediately suspicious of them simply because of the colour of their skin. When they explain they are late for work – and where they work – the policeman, definitely a product of his time, splutters: “I had no idea they hired…” before being calmly interrupted by Jackson who says: “There are plenty of women in the space programme”.

And what women. Although the film has a delightfully light tone, it is full of heart, often droll and brims with enthusiastic performances. It never plays down the brilliance of its protagonists, the essence of their exceptional work, nor the hardships they had to endure at the workplace and at home to get to where they did.

When Johnson is asked to join the elite Space Task Group headed by the harried Al Harrison (Kevin Costner, providing solid support), she has to endure the degrading stares of dozens of pairs of white, male eyes as she crosses to her desk, the humiliation of an empty kettle marked ‘coloureds’ which is deliberately placed next to the large coffee urn and the effort of having to take 40-minute loo breaks… because the only restrooms she is allowed to use are situated a few blocks away from the building she works in.

In the meantime, Jackson has to go to court to be able to enrol in a whites-only engineering school, while Vaughn is often passed over for promotions, as she often calmly mentions to her supervisor (a snooty Kirsten Dunst).

Yet, while all this unfolds around them, they carried out their jobs consummately – working out complex mathematical equations with deceptive ease, collaborating on wind tunnel experiments and figuring out the workings of new-fangled machines all the while. They let their work speak for them, while realising their wildest dreams and ambitions in a society that treated them as unimportant second-class citizens.

It’s a superb cast with Henson, Spencer and singer Monáe (in her first major film role) injecting their performances with equal amounts of humour, heart and intellect, channel-ling waves of positive energy into these remarkable and inspirational women.

Deservedly nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it ultimately walked away with none, but that takes nothing away from the fact that this is a true story of hidden figures that is really worth discovering and celebrating.