For Harrison, the deadline, rather than an acknowledgement of the civil rights movement that is beginning to gather force beyond NASA’s walls, is more important than black empowerment. Costner’s nicely underplayed character recognises Katherine’s worth, and briefly has a white saviour moment over the toilet break issue. The screenplay, by director Theodore Melfi and Allison Schroeder, draws a crossweave through the domestic lives of its three female characters, their rise out of the coloured section into spaces that are not ready for them, and the drama at NASA, which is under pressure to prove itself. We’re already there, replies the moist-eyed Katherine. ![]() Now for the Moon, says space programme head Al Harrison (Kevin Costner). The triumphs of Katherine, fellow mathematician Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), and engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) are double-edged, best captured in a dialogue exchange after the successful launch of the first American human spaceflight Friendship 7. In tracing the contributions of black mathematicians to the space programme, Hidden Figures throws another element into the mix – gender. Are the Russians the real enemy, asks a movie greenlit during the Obama era but most apt for the Age of Trump. Even as the country tries to catch up with the former Soviet Union and send astronauts into space, its black citizens continue to be held back by deeply embedded racial discrimination on the ground. The repeated motif of Katherine’s toilet visits is a shorthand for the contradictions of American society in 1961. When future astronauts come for a visit, the NASA employees are arranged into colour-coded queues, with Katherine and the other black women working as human computers at the end of the line. But she is also black, NASA is in the segregated state Virginia, and there are separate bathrooms, workplaces and canteens for whites and blacks. ![]() Katherine is a gifted mathematician, whose work on the space programme at NASA will eventually prove to be ground-breaking. Every time she needs to relieve herself, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P Henson) must skedaddle from her desk at the National Space Aeronautics Administrations office, sprint across the driveway, rush into another building some distance away and dive into its basement. The best sequences in the superbly written Hidden Figures, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s non-fiction book Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, involve washroom behaviour.
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