Hidden Figures: Historical Heartwarming True Story

Welcome to 2017, a time when an award-winning film stars three African American women. Not to mention, the movie was also nominated for two Golden Globes and three Oscars. Of course, the movie does take us back to a time where mathematically-inclined humans were referred to as “computers” (1961, to be exact).

Based on a true story, “Hidden Figures” follows the stories of three African-American women who work for NASA in the sixties. The women are played by Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe. The film focuses on the struggle of the main characters to fight oppression and advance their careers. Seeing as they are all African American, as well as women, they find it nearly impossible to move up the ranks with NASA.

By the end of the movie, each woman proves herself worthy of a promotion of some sort by demonstrating they have more knowledge in their areas than most of the white men. NASA seems reluctant to promote them, but they all receive recognition in the end.

“Hidden Figures” offers viewers a wide array of feelings, including, but not limited to anger, excitement, heartwarming feelings and just being purely emotional without being able to explain what you’re feeling or why. The movie follows the story of the women’s careers as well as their family lives and experiences with oppression outside of their careers.

Now, I am not even remotely good at nor interested in math, yet almost the entire movie is somehow related to math. Of course, the characters are all employees of NASA, so I’m assuming most viewers were confused at some of the math parts as well. The movie does a good job of making the math parts still interesting to watch, while in any other movie viewers would have probably tuned out at those points.

Thankfully, the film included my favorite part of all movies based on a true story: actual pictures of the people the characters were based on. The film wraps up with historical photos and extra information about what happened to the women after the time frame that the movie took place.

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone, but especially anyone who is particularly interested in history or the NASA space program.

Photo Credit: Internet Movie Database (IMDB)