They're both up for Oscars, but which should you spend your money on - Hidden Figures orMoonlight?
With so many amazing biopics around, it’s increasingly hard to use the phrase "incredible true story". But Hidden Figures is just that – a remarkable account of how three African-American women played a key role in the Space Race of the early 1960s.
This was an age when men strapped themselves into giant tin cans and were blasted into space for the sake of being first. In an era before computers, their safety was worked out by hand. As this film shows, it was often a woman's hand.
The film focuses on three colleagues at a NASA maths department in Virginia – the unassuming genius Katherine G. Wilson (Taraji P. Henson), extrovert Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) and the grumpy Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer). The trio spend much of their time crunching the numbers needed to send astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and bring him back down to earth safely. It's only when Katherine is promoted to the mission itself that she realises her biggest challenge will be to escape the gravity of racism and sexism in the workplace. It's everywhere. There's a segregated bathroom for "coloured" staff that involves a ten-minute dash across campus. She has her own coffee pot that nobody else will touch. And every day a range of sniffy white colleagues put her down or take credit for her work.
Katherine's decent boss, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), is an invention and it has been pointed out that NASA, at this time, was a lot more enlightened than is shown in the film, but there's no doubt that these women swum against a strong current of discrimination. The three leads are superb and their friendship gels perfectly. With all the doom and gloom in the news at the moment, this film reminds you that good can and will triumph.
While Hidden Figures is a streamlined crowd-pleaser, Moonlight is a slower dance, and the drama unfolds in elegant, subtle moves. Juan (Mahershala Ali) is a crack dealer from a tough area of Miami, who takes a young boy, Chiron, under his wing. This storyline makes up the first of three chapters in his life as he tries to survive his drug-dealing mother (an oh-so-good Naomie Harris). Chapter two sees him as a teenager struggling with his feelings towards another boy – something that's muddily resolved in the third act. It seems simple enough. A lonely boy trying to come to terms with his sexuality in a neighbourhood where being openly gay is unthinkable. But by the time we meet the eldest Chiron (Trevante Rhodes), the film has revealed its more complicated plan. That who Chiron is now, is exactly who he would be, the product of Juan's acceptance and the rejection of everyone else.
In the hands of a towering cast and a director, Barry Jenkins, who is drawing from raw personal experience, the result is devastating. Moonlight has been nominated for eight Oscars and is La La Land's closest rival. Hidden Figures has three nominations. And they both deserve every one. It's a good week to go to the cinema.
