Spot the hidden lord…..

It’s been over a week since the Oscars for 2017, and typically this is the time that we then forget about all the films which came out during the January and February period to focus on stuff we actually would like to watch with our hard earned cash and free time. But hold on gentle readers. I wish to tell you about a film which I really enjoyed and one I feel was a little hard done by in the shiny shiny chasing; Hidden Figures.

In a year where even Suicide Squad managed to get some shiny for hair and makeup (presumably the judges felt a bit horny on seeing Harley Quinn…), Hidden Figures got passed over. Why would that be? Well, let’s examine the story and background to the film first.

Hidden Figures revolves around a group of three black women in the 1960s in the US around the time of the space race with Russia. They happen to be three very intelligent women who work at NASA, but things are shall we say, not equal. Far from it in fact, the hidden figures reference clearly is to the separation and racial prejudices of the time, meaning that they were not really being recognised.

The three main characters are Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), a mathematician, Dorothy Vaughan as Octavia Spencer and finally Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). I only know Janelle was a singer before but now she’s a sassy chick from the 60s! You go girl! It nicely sets the tone of the time and friendship between the three women in the opening scene where their car is broken down and a police bloke happens to come along and think they’re up to no good. It’s at this point, you are made fully aware that this is the time where black people are pretty much looked down on by us whities, so it’s not going to be too much fun.

However, that’s not the whole story. Over the course of the film, we see NASA falling behind in the space race, while all the time, the women are fighting pretty much for anything and everything to try and do better, when they are basically against the white staff treating them like crap. The thing is, they are smart and yet, rarely given a chance to shine. Dorothy Vaughan is given a chance however when she’s to begin checking calculations on a rocket to send up an actual person into orbit.

At first, she has to run back and forth to use a coloured bathroom while being forced effectively to recheck everything and suffer others lording it over her, others like 60s version of Sheldon Cooper, played by Jim Parsons with no sense of irony whatsoever…. Katherine however goes out on a limb and start showing what she’s made of, not only by rightly losing it over a “coloured only” coffee jug, but also working out what was needed for a rocket with an astronaut to do an orbit and come back down successfully.

SCIENCE!

That’s not even the end of it either as Dorothy ends up reading up about how the new IBM machine works with a new programming language, along with the rest of the work pool of black women and wonderfully showing up the white guys who haven’t a damn clue about the monster machinery. Mary herself works to become an engineer after being pushed on by her boss, having to get permission to go to an all whites school to become qualified. It’s all actually quite amazing and in essence, there’s quite a few details I’m missing here so you can enjoy yourself instead.

Excellent humour abounds in this, along with some genuine emotional moments. The cast is actually wonderful together, really showing a friendship which is aged over many years between the three main women. It’s actually quite remarkably how many stars they do end up cramming into the film, with Kevin Costner as the stern NASA director who is trying to ensure they beat the Russians, Kirsten Dunst as a woman who doesn’t like blacks, Glen Powell as the happy go lucky Astronaut, and Mahershala Ali who becomes Katherine Johnson’s main squeeze as time goes on. I actually was happy they included the three women in real life at the end to show that they met Obama etc.

Now you could argue this all sounds so far, so oscar-baity and where’s the exit? I wouldn’t blame you at all. But remarkably it’s actually quite entertaining as a story as well as highlighting the achievements of everyone at NASA during the space race. The combination of racial issues along with showing what can be done when geniuses excel in their field, actually was surprisingly uplifting.

It’s perhaps more relevant than anything now, and this is my reason why:

Everything that’s happened in the world so far in 2017, which seems to be hell bent on topping 2016 as the crappiest year in the 21st century. We seem to be regressing as a species where people with intelligence are frowned upon, and progress on various social issues are regressing back. This film was a celebration of progress, socially and scientifically. It was a wonderful message in that if you try and work hard, you will succeed against whatever odds you face. It’s far more uplifting that anything in the news it seems and that’s why that right now, I would highly recommend seeing Hidden Figures.

It shows that there may still be hope for something better. And we need that now.