Movie: HIDDEN FIGURES

As soon as I saw the preview for HIDDEN FIGURES I was hooked.   As a women, as a history lover, as a child of the sixties who grew up watching the race to the moon, the civil rights movement, and the race riots in my hometown of Chicago, I was anxious to get an expanded, heels on the ground, black southern world view of my memories.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The movie HIDDEN FIGURES is based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly and brilliantly shares the untold true story of three “human computers” who played critical roles in the US’s space race in the early 1960s when main frame computers were just coming into use.

So why haven’t we heard of these extraordinary people before now?

They were mathematicians.  They were women.  They were black.  And they lived and worked in the Jim Crow south.

The acting and storytelling of HIDDEN FIGURES is flawless.  From the very first scene you get a sense of the priorities, prejudices and social structure of the times.  You also immediately get a sense of the perseverance, ingenuity and strength of character of the three women — Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson played (respectively) by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe who helped shape history.

Hidden Figures is a must-see movie — enlightening, uplifting, thoroughly entertaining.  Not just because of its geeky insiders view of the early space program and the many messages of personal empowerment, but because HIDDEN FIGURES shares a glimpse of old style American “Can Do” spirit that, even in a time of strife, unified our country behind a cause bigger than ourselves.

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