Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 11, 2017

Advertisements for Gifted, a film about an extremely precocious child, are all over television currently as this review is being written, and as I watched the opening of Hidden Figures, I had a passing thought about Gifted's titular character played by Mckenna Grace—no matter what traumas she supposedly experienced, at least she was white and living in contemporary times, when virtuosity of any kind in the young is hopefully better recognized and fostered than the way it was (meaning wasn't) when the African American women at the core of Hidden Figures were children. Perhaps kind of weirdly, Gifted also features Octavia Spencer, one of the co-stars of Hidden Figures, a film which offers Taraji P. Henson miles (as in miles) away from her depiction of Cookie in Empire: The Complete First Season, as real life wunderkind Katherine Johnson, a character who is in fact seen as a child in the film’s opening scenes. It’s the 1920s in the rural south, and while little Katherine shows an unbelievable aptitude for complex mathematics, she’s African American, which means public schooling isn’t available for her after an almost astonishingly young age. Luckily, she’s surrounded by mentors who recognize her incredible gifts, and who arrange for Katherine and her parents to move to a locale where a private institution can more properly nurture her talents. But what could an African American woman expect to be able to use those talents for? That’s the intriguing unspoken question that lingers around Hidden Figures, as it segues into the early sixties, where Katherine, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) are all employed at NASA as part of the United States’ then burgeoning attempts to compete with the Soviet Union, which (as armchair historians will know) was already shooting satellites into orbit and proclaiming its technological superiority to the world.

Hidden Figures rather smartly addresses the cultural norms of the early sixties in a number of ways, including the first scene showing the adult characters, where their car has broken down as they attempt to get to work at Langley Research Center. When a white policeman shows up, it seems that disaster is in the cards, especially when Mary’s innocent if slightly snarky comment about why they’re at that particular spot in the road is taken as “uppity” by the cop. Once they show him their identification badges, though, his attitude rather interestingly changes, since there’s a great threat than “uppity” African Americans in his mind—namely, those savage Commies who are out for world domination courtesy of Sputnik.

The film quickly starts to detail the lives of the women at NASA, where of course they’re often perceived as second class citizens despite their superior skills. While the stories of all three focal characters are detailed at various points, Hidden Figures is probably most consistently concerned with Katherine’s tale, since her knowledge of advanced geometry gets her a plum assignment working for (fictional) Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), the guy in charge of making sure the Mercury capsule successfully gets into orbit and then (perhaps even more challengingly) returns to Earth unscathed. There are multiple levels of outright bias displayed against Katherine, who has the twin “deficits” of being a woman and African American supposedly working against her. Even something as apparently simple as finding an "appropriate" restroom to use turns out to be a major hurdle for the character, since it's shown (in what is evidently a mind boggling piece of general historical accuracy if not with regard to this particular character's real story) that the research group still had "separate but equal" facilities for people of color.

Perhaps because Katherine’s story deals with actual, honest to goodness life or death ramifications in terms of her mathematical abilities, the simultaneously unfolding sagas of Mary and Dorothy may not have quite the same level of immediacy, despite how emotionally resonant they are. Dorothy is attempting to get official recognition of her supervisory status, something that doesn’t seem to be in the immediate offing, while Mary, who is the same kind of savant in engineering that Katherine is in geometry, decides that a career in that field is in fact a possibility, despite signs to the contrary. One thing that may set some folks’ teeth on edge, at least slightly, is how supportive some elder white men, including Harrison, are of these women, when the actual historical record might suggest at least a modicum of reactionary dismissiveness toward women in general, and African American women in particular. That said, the film doesn’t shirk from the hostility the women face, and in fact it’s that very hostility which will most likely touch many viewers’ sense of conscience and justice.

The largely unknown story of Hidden Figures is so compelling and memorable that it helps the film overcome some overly rote storytelling contrivances. Most audience members are going to know going into this enterprise that seeming nemeses like Harrison or engineer Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) are going to have their collective eyes opened to the talents of women like Katherine, but even given that preordained fact the film manages to work up significant emotional heft, largely due to the pitch perfect performances. It’s almost shocking in a way that Hidden Figures only managed to rack up one Academy Award nomination for acting (Octavia Spencer in the Best Supporting Actress category), since the film is filled with both commanding lead performances as well as a glut of nicely etched supporting work from a large and varied cast which also includes Kirsten Dunst as a seemingly pretty “uppity” white supervisor (who of course also has her eyes opened). Director Theodore Melfi (who also co-wrote the screenplay, adapting the reportedly more historically accurate book) keeps things moving at an often breathless pace, and things are further buoyed by an accurate looking production design, one which points out the almost barbaric seeming “technology” that actually helped thrust John Glenn into orbit in 1962.

Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hidden Figures is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot on both 35mm and 16mm film, this has a generally extremely well detailed image. The opening "flashback" has been graded to a kind of sepia tone, and that, combined with the Super 16 stock, leads to a somewhat less detailed and slightly grittier look. A lot of the contemporary (i.e., 1961) footage pops quite well, with great fine detail levels in close-ups, but occasionally variable clarity in midrange and wide shots. Some source archival video can look fairly ragged when compared to the bulk of the presentation (see screenshot 13) and the minimal CGI (used mostly to detail things like satellites or the Mercury 7 in space) isn't immaculately sharp looking, but otherwise this has a nicely organic and problem free appearance.

Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hidden Figures has a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track. Perhaps surprisingly, there's not a ton of floorboard shattering LFE during blastoff, perhaps because things are being monitored from a distance from the film's perspective, but there are occasional nice blasts of low frequency energy, as when Mary literally stumbles into a wind and heat stress test on the Mercury capsule. I have to say my personal reaction is that the Pharrell Williams contributions to the score aren't all that helpful, but otherwise the score, built out of both source cues and more traditional underscore by Hans Zimmer, often resonates quite clearly from the side and rear channels. Dialogue is cleanly presented and smartly prioritized even some of the busier sounding scenes where things like overlapping Mission Control voices add a sense of chaos.

Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• It All Adds Up — The Making of Hidden Figures (1080p; 41:46) is an above average set of featurettes that kind of ping pongs between more traditional EPK fare with interviews and a more thoughtful analysis of some of the actual history involved.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 10:14) feature optional commentary by director Theodore Melfi.


• Hidden Figures: Filming in Georgia (1080p; 5:15) is a brief look at the locations filling in for the real life NASA.


• Audio Commentary by Theodore Melfi and Taraji P. Henson


• Gallery (1080p; 2:18) offers both an Auto Advance and a Manual Advance option. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:25)

Hidden Figures Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are some kind of goofy elements thrown into Hidden Figures which probably didn't need to be there, and the film has a tendency to stuff a few too many subplots into the proceedings, but the performances are just outstanding and the general storyline so commanding that it really hardly matters. Technical merits are strong, and Hidden Figures comes Highly recommended.