Treats its characters as human beings who deserve our respect and admiration

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 2017)

Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson are not household names. In fact, they were not even on the radar until Theodore Melfi's film Hidden Figures told their story. Based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures is about three African-American women working at NASA in the 1960s who broke through barriers of race and gender to become essential contributors to the U.S. space program and without which, famous astronauts such as John Glenn and Allan Shepard would probably have never flown. All three were employed by NASA but only as "computers," people who worked for the engineering and flight sections performing manual calculations.
As the space program pushed through boundaries to match the Russian man in space program, barriers had to be broken on the ground as well to complete a successful mission. Though it was 1961 and the civil rights movement had already begun under the leadership of Martin Luther King, restaurant lunch counters, water fountains in public parks, libraries, and bathrooms were still segregated. In the film which was nominated for Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars, the three women, Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) have to deal with humiliating incidents of racial prejudice they repeatedly encounter on the job though they were as brainy and qualified as their male counterparts.
What they lacked was the title of engineer and mathematician and the respect of equal pay for equal work. Dorothy is denied the title of supervisor by her boss Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst) even though she is already doing supervisor's work. Mary wants to become an engineer and work in the engineering section, but she requires college courses which can only be taken at a school that denies entry to people of color. Katherine, a mathematics genius, works on a Special Task Force for Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), but her main job is to check the calculations of her white male co-workers, including that of the coldly disdainful Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons). They all feel the pressure to do their jobs without complaining unless they are labeled as troublemakers.
This means the indignity of Katherine putting up with having to walk a half mile to go to the nearest "colored" rest room, Mary having to go to court just to be able to take night classes at the local high school, and Dorothy having to plead her case to her boss to be given the title of Supervisor. Hidden Figures is more than an entertaining feel-good movie, though it is that. It is a long overdue recognition of what life was like for African-Americans under segregation and the special burden that women had to face. While the film is a hard-edged depiction of racial prejudice, it is not preachy or one-dimensional but treats its protagonists as human beings who deserve our respect and admiration.
Melfi cares for his characters, showing Katherine's courtship by Colonel Jim Johnson (Mahershala Ali) and the women's family and church life with warmth and humor. Granted the film is not notable for its depth of characterization or its subtlety and Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson were not saints, yet the truth is that saints are not necessarily those who perform miracles, but are also those who stand up for human dignity. In that respect, the three women deserve the title.