The cast includes the following actors:
Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson
Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughn
Janelle Monáe as Mary Jackson
Kevin Costner as Al Harrison
Glen Powell as John Glenn
Kirsten Dunst as Vivian Mitchell
Jim Parsons as Paul Stafford
Mahershala Ali as Jim Jackson
Aldis Hodge as Levi Jackson
Plot Summary:
The movie begins with the time frame of 1961 in America. The
opening scene shows Katherine Johnson and her two friends Dorothy Vaughn and Mary
Jackson. They work in the calculation department at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
Katherine is a very good mathematician. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary
Jackson are on their way to work in a car.
Just like every other day, their car stops working on their way. A
policeman arrives there and asks for their ids. He even sarcastically comments on
their color saying that from when the people like them (he meant black people)
started getting jobs at NASA. Actually, the white and black people used to work
separately at that time. Whites didn’t use to let the blacks come near to them
and in the same way, didn’t even use to talk with them. There was heavy racial
discrimination at that time.
At that time, America and Russia were in the competition of
launching satellites into space so that they could spy on each other. Al Harrison
is in charge of this project and is even the head of NASA. Everyone from the
military and defense are pressurizing him to launch the satellites as soon as
possible because Russia was getting way too forward. No one is helping him but
just wants the result. Harrison asks to call someone who is very good at
analytical geometry. But no whites were really good at that. So Secretary
Mitchell goes to the West group (where the blacks used to work). Katherine and
her friends are black. There she gets to know that Katherine is very good at
that so she hires her to assist Harrison. Also, her friend Mary gets appointed
to the hit shield department. There an engineer Karl Zielinski motivates Mary to
become an engineer. But since Mary was a black girl, she was not allowed to
study in a school where whites study.
Katherine now goes to the East group from the West group. There
she doesn’t get much of a warm welcome. One of her co worker even hands her a
garbage bin thinking that she must be a cleaner. Everyone stays farther from
Katherine. When Harrison gets near to her and talks, he understands that
Katherine has the caliber to work. Harrison doesn’t support racial discrimination. Paul,
the chief engineer of the workplace doesn’t like Katherine.
Katherine asks one of the lady coworkers where the washroom is
but the lady denies to tell her. She then goes to the west wing to use the
washroom. They don’t even let her use their coffee machines. At the end of the
day, Harrison throws all her calculations in the dustbin because he thinks she
did everything so quickly in a hurry.
Another day a group of astronauts come there. They are getting
ready to go to space for the very first time in history. One of the
astronauts named John Glenn meets Katherine and her friends. He becomes happy
and optimistic looking at them.
Paul starts getting more and more troublesome to Katherine. He
hides some of the lines of the document so that it becomes difficult for her
calculations. But Katherine with all her senses from the remaining data finds
out the reason behind the failure of the past missions. Katherine does it so
well that Harrison and Paul doubt if she is a Russian spy. They even
interrogate her and they find out that she has genuinely done the calculations.
Hence he gives him the other set of data for further calculations. Anna on the
other hand has cased a file so that she too can study engineering in a white
school. She gets approved to join the night class.
On the other hand, a piece of news spreads that Russia has successfully
sent its astronauts into space. This news makes Harrison mad and makes
everyone work overtime. When he checks Katherine at her desk, he doesn’t
find her and he gets angry. When she comes there, Harrison shouts at her badly
and asks her where she was. Katherine replies that she went to the
washroom. He cross-questions her telling her who goes to the washroom for the whole 40
minutes. Katherine replies confidently that she doesn’t get to use a washroom
here and that she has to walk half a mile to use the washroom. She even adds that
no one comes near to her or talks to her. She tells that she is even given a
different coffee machine and after working as hard as possible, she gets only
half of the salary she gets. Harrison didn’t know about all this. He goes
to the door of the ‘colored washroom’ breaks the board and tells the black
ladies that they can use the washroom wherever they want.
NASA had to perform very precise calculations to send astronauts
to the satellite. So Katherine had to attend high-level meetings too. Before
that, neither a lady nor a black human had gone to such meetings. But now
Katherine gets to go to the meeting and throw light on her calculations.
Everyone attending the meeting gets impressed. Glenn too gets happy looking at
Katherine’s work.
Katherine does all the calculations of the mission using her
skills. But now since the IBM machines have arrived, Harrison tells Katherine
that she doesn’t have to do calculations any longer and hence she can go to the
west wing back. Hence Katherine has to go to the west wing now. At this time, Paul
and his friends have stopped practicing racial discrimination.
Rocket is on the verge of launching now. But in the end moment, the
calculations done by the IBM computers look faulty. No one gets any idea how that
happened. Harrison calls Glenn and Glenn answers that he is ready to go to the
space if Katherine does the remaining calculation. Harrison calls Katherine and
she performs the calculations. At first, she is not allowed to come inside but
later Harrison takes her to the operating room.
The calculations become precise and Glenn successfully gets to space and even lands safely. Paul and Katherine become good friends too. Also,
Mary successfully graduates from the engineering school. Their other friend Dorothy
also becomes the first colored supervisor of NASA. And the story ends with a happy
ending. The movie ‘Hidden Figure’ depicts the oppressed hidden figures like
Katherine behind the success of such a great project and gives a real view of
racial discrimination prevailing in the past and a deep message against racial
discrimination.
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