Ever since the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science decided to change the rules for the Best Picture category to allow up to 10 movies nominated, there have always been instances where I can’t help but question: “why was this movie nominated for best film of the year??”. This year, I asked myself that question when I saw that Hidden Figures was among the nominees.
Not only is it nominated for the biggest award, it also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer). It is a good and entertaining movie, but it doesn’t justify all these nominations (the most unexplainable, for me, was the fact that the cast won the SAG Awards for best ensemble, when all the other nominees were better).
Based on a true story, Hidden Figures focuses on the lives and work of three African American women mathematicians who worked for NASA during the 1960s and played a vital role in the success of astronaut John Glenn’s mission into space. Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) suffer two main types of discrimination at work: (i) they are women working in a men-dominated environment and (ii) they are African Americans, which meant that they weren’t allowed to use the same bathroom as white women or pour coffee from the same coffee pot as their white co-workers.
They have to prove themselves over and over again during the entire movie, until their bosses finally realize that they are actually extremely smart and can actively help NASA operations. It could have been a more interesting and poignant, hadn’t it been for the way the stories are told. In my opinion, writers Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi are trying too hard to soften a story that isn’t light at all. On the contrary: these 3 women (and many other unknown) must have gone through a great ordeal.
The cast overall is really good and it also includes Kevin Costner, Jim Parsons, Kirsten Dunst, and Mahershala Ali. That doesn’t mean, however, that they are outstanding enough to win the SAG Awards, as I mentioned earlier. Out of the 3 main characters, Taraji P. Henson is the one with the best performance to me, yet Octavia Spencer was the one nominated (which still makes no sense, in my opinion). I really like Octavia, but I just don’t think her performance in this movie was that good.
In short, it is a feel-good movie, very well done, but that is definitely not the best film of the year!
