Barbie directed by Greta Gerwig
Year: 2023
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 3.9/5 ★
Oppenheimer directed by Christopher Nolan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 4.0/5 ★
Before Watching:
On July 18th, 2008, Mamma Mia! (read: Aegean summer revelry, White Lotus precursor, musical Romp and Circumstance) was released the same day as The Dark Knight (read: rugged, muscular thriller with enough gothic eyeliner to Keep Up with at least one Kardashian). Fifteen years later, Christopher Nolan is yet again dropping his bomb on a female director’s feel-good box office favorite. Nolan is a master of many techniques—perspective, chronological illusion, climactic cinematography—but he’s also evidently skilled in counterprogramming. This time around, however, the dichotomy between Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is so laughable that netizens have evidently split a few Uranium-235 atoms and ramped the meme factory up to World War II-level production volumes.
Seriously, the Barbenheimer phenomenon is unprecedented. Everywhere I scroll, I see photos of Los Angeles-meets-Los Alamos outfits or screenshots of unhinged viewing schedules: 10:00am cigarette and black coffee, 11:00am Oppenheimer (it’s 180 minutes long), 2:30pm brunch with mimosas, 4:00pm Barbie, 6:30pm dinner, drinks, nightclub. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “double feature” from friends whom I can barely convince to sit through Drive My Car. Everyone with a Twitter1 has become a doll in Hollywood’s dreamhouse, and well… I guess that’s great for the industry? Especially since both films exceeded my expectations; stepping up to the box office window just feels like when McDonald’s would ask if you want a girl toy or a boy toy with your Happy Meal.
Margot Robbie plays “stereotypical Barbie” in Barbieland—she wakes up in a heart-shaped bed, floats from her roof to her engineless car, and even has a perfect breakfast without consuming a single mouthful. She lives a glamorous life, attending all-female Supreme Court hearings minutes before dropping by the beach to flirt with Simu Liu—in a universe positively drenched in pink.2 Ken (Ryan Gosling), on the other hand, only has a good day if Barbie pays him attention. He’d love to elevate their flirtationship to the next level, but this is a G-rated universe and every night is a “girls’ night” sleepover. Unusual occurrences begin befalling Barbie, and under the sage but nonsensical counsel of Weird Barbie (of course, Kate McKinnon), she decides to venture into the “real world” of Los Angeles3 to straighten everything out. Ken tags along, and he’s in for quite the surprise when he learns about a little thing called patriarchy. Thus, we witness the birth of Ken Shapiro.
“Watching the first half hour of this movie is like being waterboarded with Pepto-Bismol.”
-Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
A long time ago, in a universe far, far away4 from Barbieland, Oppenheimer unfolds as a dense, quintessentially Nolan political drama. I’ll warn you now—the film is great, but it has a prerequisite list that spans from basic quantum mechanics to intermediate U.S. history. I can see how it’s easy to get lost if you don’t already know who Hoover and McCarthy are5 or why they keep calling quantum the “new physics.” But, if you can buckle in, you’ll witness a stunning biography of the father of the atomic bomb and the Inception of our modern world order. Unable to resist messing with time, Nolan splices atoms while splicing the action of Oppenheimer’s life and career (portrayed by Cillian Murphy) in between two trials: a 1954 hearing on his security clearance and alleged left-wing ideologies, and a 1959 Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) to join Eisenhower’s cabinet. Iron Man steals the show with a dramatic performance that stands out from the rest of the cast (which also includes Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and a mischievous little Rami Malik), but we already know how the story goes. Is it a spoiler to say they finished the bomb if it happened almost 80 years ago?
Both films have their ups and downs. Oppenheimer spends less time on physics than Tenet (where the physics is fake), and too much time on J. Robert’s sexual relationships. All of the women in the film are portrayed as either objects (*cough* even more than Barbie *cough* where they are literally toy dolls) or histrionic, naïve obstacles to the work of men. And, yeah, the narrative thread is a tad garbled and paced too quickly for the average viewer to juggle the dozens of characters. But the thesis (once the mushroom cloud settles) is substantial, capturing both this incomprehensibly influential moment in history and the moral hydra that Oppenheimer navigates. On the reverse, Barbie is deceptively clever—jokes will undoubtedly go over your toddlers’ heads, but what Gerwig says about identity shines through even the pinkest of visors. Unfortunately, the film spends too much energy straddling subversive meta-cinema and corporate shill excrement, but who’s counting? The imagination and absurdist humor evoke EEAAO in their ability to package existentialism into costume changes.
TLDR: cinema needs more of this. Barbenheimer’s digital following is evidence that bold choices and participation have the power to revive the medium. The days of The Rocky Horror Picture Show are long gone, but why do we have to stop showing up to the IMAX in themed attire? If there’s an acceptable reason to leave the house in a porkpie hat and rollerblades, then bombs away.
Barbie and Oppenheimer were released in the United States on July 21st, 2023, and are now available in theaters worldwide. Their simultaneous debut (and sharp juxtaposition of style and content) have fostered a widespread internet craze.
After Watching:
Every blockbuster nowadays has controversy, but Barbie’s is so unhinged I can’t omit it from this column. There’s a scene early on where they show a “world map” (with the heaviest possible air quotes, as it looks like a child’s crayon drawing) which apparently has some ramifications for geopolitics? Here’s the map in question (I know, I’ve seen it too):
And the dotted line next to Asia has been accused of signifying the infamous Nine-dash Line, which the Chinese Communist Party uses to delineate their claim over islands in the South China Sea. Did Greta Gerwig intend to endorse the PRC’s sovereignty over these waters? My money says no, but it’s hilarious how many people are saying yes—the nation of Vietnam banned the movie over this map.
Other than that, my main post-film comments are:
The fascist joke (including the “but I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce” follow-up) is hysterical, cementing the target audience as not-children,
The Margot Robbie call-out is also funny, but somewhat off-center as it destabilizes the film’s narrative consistency, and
What the hell was the entire sequence with Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler? It was cute at first, but then it flew off the rails in that Harry Potter 7-esque white-background dream sequence.
Oppenheimer is a gem of WWII cinema, among the likes of The Imitation Game (2014), Onoda (2021), or (upcoming) The Zone of Interest (2023). Nolan’s films are always virtuosic, grand achievements of production design (padded by colossal budgets), but Oppenheimer stands out in its ability to capture historical gravity. The line-up of renowned quantum minds felt like the STEM equivalent of The Avengers, with the audience losing their effing minds when Einstein appeared on screen. I would have appreciated some tightening of the narrative and stronger physics writing in the script, but the film is an achievement all the same. Paired with Barbie, the experience works—now I, too, am become Barbie Girl, destroyer of Barbie Worlds.
Or, I guess… a Threads?
Sherlock gave us “A Study in Pink”, but this is a lecture in pink.
By far, the least real place in the real world.
Likely, the screen next-door.
I saw the film in Hong Kong, and bore witness to a cacophony of whispers and clandestine in-seat Googling every time they named a different U.S. President without explaining who he was.