DVD Review: Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures
[DVD Hidden]

This 2016 film is a historical biopic, loosely based on the non-fiction book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly. It looks at the experiences of three African-American female scienctists working at NASA during the early days of the space race in the early 1960s. Taraji P. Henson plays Katherine Johnson (nee Goble), a brilliant mathematician who is ultimately called upon to calculate the flight trajectories of the Mercury flights and other missions. Janelle Monae plays Mary Jackson, an engineer in training who joins the team working on the heat shields for the Mercury vehicles, helping to identify a fatal flaw in their designs. And Octavia Spencer is Dorothy Vaughn, who initially serves as the “acting supervisor” for the African-American workers on the project, and then learns FORTRAN computer programming (from library books!) and teaches it to her team, in order to form one of the earliest computer programming units within NASA. Additional cast members include Kevin Costner, Mahershala Ali, Kirsten Dunst and Jim Parsons.

The film highlights both the racial and sexual prejudices the three central characters faced and overcame in their careers at NASA, and shines a light on a little-known chapter in America’s history of space exploration. Indeed, I was completely unaware of the events chronicled in this film, including Katherine Johnson’s incredible contributions to the Mercury program. Oddly enough, about the same time this film was in theaters, an episode of the NBC time travel series Timeless also touched on this exact same storyline. I was fascinated by the events portrayed in this film, and enjoyed reading even more about it in Shetterly’s book.

[Also available in traditional print format, by Margot Lee Shetterly.] [ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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