Hidden Figures opens in 1962 as NASA is getting ready to launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit around the Earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour. This was before computers, so humans in mission control do rapid-fire calculations to plot rocket trajectories and "go" or "no go" re-entry paths.
Many of these math whizzes are African-American women who are supernaturally gifted in mathematics, engineering, and applied geometry. Hidden Figures tells the story of three such ladies: Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), and Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer).
"I locked onto the humanity of three women who were trying to be in the space program [while] fighting sexism [and] racism; how could you not get caught up in wanting to tell that story, the humanity of it?" director Theodore Melfi told PCMag during a recent visit to the set in Atlanta. The early 60s were "an explosive period for our country. That was great for me to dig into that."
The women were recruited between 1943 and 1953 by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), which merged with NASA in 1958. It was a time of deep division in the US, with Jim Crow laws still undermining equality and human rights. Johnson, Jackson, and Vaughan are segregated from their white colleagues, forced to eat and work in separate buildings, and banned from using "white" bathrooms. Johnson's colleagues put the word "colored" on a coffee pot so she won't use theirs.
Still, the women persevere. In the film, as the men from the IBM come to install the first computers, Vaughan sees the writing on the wall, and urges her "girls" to switch to programming, allowing them to become world-class experts in Fortran.
Taraji P. Henson tells PCMag math wasn't her strongest subject at school, but she wanted to pay homage to an extraordinary woman. "I want to do right by Ms. Katherine Johnson and her legacy," she says.
"We're shooting this scene today, where she finally has all the calculations right, and she takes it to the room, this guy snatches all this work out of her hand and shuts the door in her face. Every obstacle that she could have, she had, that was the way it was. But at the end of the day, it was about, 'How do we get that man into space and safely back again?' and 'Do we have the right math to calculate that?' And she did."
Kevin Costner plays Al Harrison, director of the Space Task Group. "It's amazing how low-tech it was back then," he tells PCMag. Despite having a smaller role in the film, Costner was glad to "support [the women] and the story. It's nice to be a part of something that has a real good feeling at the end, and to think we've opened up the pages of history a little bit."
The sexism and racism can be hard to watch, but the dignity, humor, and strength shown by these women, and the actresses who play them, earned a rousing ovation at a recent preview screening.
In the end, the movie is a true celebration of the beginning of the computer age. The moment humans put down their pencils and picked up programming manuals to communicate with IBM mainframes, the space race truly took off.
Hidden Figures will get a limited release on Dec. 25, in order to qualify for the Oscars. Expect it to sweep the boards; it's wonderful.