4.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.6.17
A film that moves its audience to
cheers and applause, as the screen fades to black, is an exhilarating experience
for the patrons involved.
But a film that also prompts such
a response several times during the
course of its story?
 |
| When John Glenn (Glen Powell) arrives at the Langley Research Center, he makes a point of greeting members of the West Area Computing team: from left, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, partially obscured). |
That’s a rare gift.
Director Theodore Melfi’s Hidden Figures isn’t merely a
crowd-pleasing slice of actual history; it’s also a sly social statement, and a
rich showcase for its three starring actresses. Melfi and co-scripter Allison
Schroeder have turned Margot Lee Shetterly’s absorbing nonfiction book into an
engaging drama that charms and fascinates in equal measure.
More than anything else, though,
I remain stunned by the fact that half a century has passed, before this
jaw-droppingly amazing story has been brought to our attention. What the heck took so long?
The setting alone is an
eyebrow-raiser that somehow missed being discussed in any of my history texts. Much of NASA’s initial
efforts during the early days of the space race, playing catch-up after the
Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1 and several subsequent spacecraft,
took place at Virginia’s Langley Research Center, then very much a part of the
Jim Crow South.
The campus included a remote,
fully segregated arm known as West Area Computing, staffed entirely by African
American women — all mathematicians — somewhat dismissively dubbed “computers.”
When a group in the larger, posher east end of the center needed numerical
verification (basically arithmetic scut-work), a lead engineer — all of said
engineers being white and male — would send for “a computer,” much the way a
temp secretary would be requested.
Shetterly’s book profiles four
such women: Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine
Darden. The latter has been omitted from this film; the other three have been
brought to glorious life, respectively, by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer
and Janelle Monáe.
(A quick bit of back-story not
included in the script: The World War II-era recruitment of women allowed Vaughan,
originally a mathematics teacher, to be hired in 1943 by the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics, the precursor to NASA. Jackson and Johnson, also
mathematicians, were hired in 1951 and ’53, respectively.)
Melfi begins his film in the late
1950s, on a typical workday that finds the three women car-pooling to Langley.
A bit of engine trouble and a white cracker cop prompt some quick character
sketches: Mary is impertinent and mildly scandalous; Katherine is demure and
careful to soften Mary’s edges; the mechanically minded Dorothy is a sort of
cranky “den mother” to the other two.
Once at work, Langley’s pecking
order is established with similarly deft sequences. Marching orders for the
various West Area employees are presented by East Area’s Vivian Mitchell
(Kirsten Dunst), a chill authoritarian whose interactions with Dorothy — the de facto head of West Area, who chafes
at being denied an official supervisor’s title and salary — are polite but
condescending.
Dunst plays this role well, her patronizing
smile reflecting the ubiquitous — and perhaps even unconscious — bias and
prejudice of the times. Indeed, during one choice exchange with Dorothy, late
in the story, Vivian denies any racist tendencies. Spencer’s perfectly timed
reply is to die for.
On this particular day, the
Flight Research Division team headed by Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) requires a
“computer” skilled in analytic geometry. Katherine draws the assignment and
finds herself in a room filled with silent, sullen and — in a few cases —
openly contemptuous white men.
It’s perhaps a bit lazy, on the
script’s part, that almost all of them remain nameless and faceless. The
notable exception is lead engineer Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons, recognized from
TV’s The Big Bang Theory), who
immediately takes offense at the notion that his work is to be checked by some
“colored woman.”
It should be noted that although
Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson are actual characters whose activities and achievements
here are depicted accurately — including, most particularly, the corker of a
climax involving Johnson and Friendship 7 astronaut John Glenn — Harrison,
Stafford and Mitchell are fictitious. Stafford serves as cinematic shorthand to
represent the various obstructive engineers who hindered Johnson, while
Harrison is a composite of the color-blind colleagues who valued her work.
The two actors are an effective
contrast. Parsons makes Stafford petulant and demeaning, refusing to share
publishing credit even when Johnson does most (all?) of the computational work.
He’s an arrogant little weenie who masks his sexism and racism by insisting, to
deflect Johnson’s carefully worded protests, that “we simply don’t do things that way” (the inevitable last
refuge of the fairness-impaired).
Costner, on the other hand,
employs his “quiet good guy” shtick to excellent effect, his slow, silent takes
making it quite clear that Harrison won’t let institutional bias interfere with
obtaining the best possible results ... even if he’s occasionally slow to do
the right thing. But he makes up for it with decisive action, on a couple of
occasions. And if one of those acts is a shameless, undoubtedly contrived
“movie moment,” it’s nonetheless a crowd-pleaser.
But these guys are supplemental
to the primary story about Johnson, Vaughan and Jackson, which skillfully
blends workplace drama with gentler moments that find them at home, often
together, or with family members.
Jackson’s saucy exterior aside,
she yearns to become an engineer, an unthinkable career for a black woman in
Virginia; this dream gives Monáe’s performance a softer edge, particularly when
Mary interacts with her husband, Levi (Aldis Hodge, perhaps remembered from
TV’s Leverage). He’s emblematic of
the African Americans who simmered under the slow, slow, slow progress of the Civil Rights movement, and he worries that his
wife will be shattered by the inflexibility of “the system.”
Spencer gets all the best
one-liners and arch slow takes; there’s no doubt that Dorothy is a hoot. But
she, too, chafes beneath institutional restrictions; her various encounters
with Mitchell reveal the delicacy of Spencer’s performance. We can anticipate,
from Dorothy’s gaze, the many things that she’d like to say to her smug white
superior ... but, in almost every case, such ill-advised thoughts yield to
morose resignation. The shift is heartbreaking each time.
Until — and, in a saga filled
with extraordinary details, this may be the most incredible — Spencer’s eyes
light up when Dorothy sees opportunity, with the arrival of a massive first-gen
mainframe from an upstart company named IBM.
Engaging as Spencer and Monáe
are, Melfi most often focuses on Henson, and no surprise: Johnson makes the
greatest impact within the all-important Flight Research Division. Indeed,
Melfi cleverly makes her math prowess just as fascinating — even exciting — as
director Denis Villeneuve did with arcane linguistics, in Arrival. Math professors and engineers will cheer this film for
years, and it’ll certainly be a great recruitment tool for adolescent girls
contemplating STEM careers.
Henson is an admirable model of
unreserved dignity, even under occasionally undignified circumstances. She
makes Johnson an honest-to-God superhero, albeit a modest one: cleverly winning
points not through futile argument, but via an intellect that’s too impressive
to ignore. Her quietly triumphant grins are to be cherished; we cheer her every
success.
On the home front, Henson also
displays warm chemistry during Katherine’s flirty encounters with Lt. Col.
James A. Johnson (the ubiquitous Mahershala Ali), who would become her second
husband. (Her first husband, referenced briefly in the script, died of an
inoperable brain tumor in 1956.) Their courtship is period-sweet, eventually
building to a touching dinner table climax that Melfi stages for maximum
poignance.
Mention also must be made of Glen
Powell, whose portrayal of astronaut John Glenn is appropriately dazzling,
perceptive and intelligent.
Production designer Wynn Thomas
conveys a strong sense of period authenticity, most of the action taking place
at Langley, or within somebody’s home; outside excursions — to church, or a
quick Main Street-ish setting — are brief.
Mostly, though, Melfi is to be
congratulated for this always entertaining presentation of fact-based drama.
Space fans have long recalled the results of the Mercury programs, and
particularly the Friendship 7 mission, but this glimpse of back-story is
astonishing for all the detail we didn’t
know.
Melfi has remained rigorously
faithful to a meticulously researched book that can be regarded as a black,
female-centric response to Tom Wolfe’s The
Right Stuff, and is every bit as triumphantly fascinating.
The
right stuff, indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment