Barbenheimer - the End and the Beginning of Everything
- Glendon Frank
- Aug 18, 2023
- 27 min read
Okay, so it’s been a slow season.
Not for movies! Movies have been having a very, very busy season. Nearly every week for the past few months, a new stellar movie has come out and become my obsession for the next few days. The one week that nothing was out in cinemas, Taylor Swift was releasing Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) so it’s been all around a stellar summer in that regard. Even if the summer film season is about to slow down, there are still a lot of big hits set for the rest of the year, including Dune 2: More Dune which is set to release on my birthday! At least, that’s what it’s currently set for; current talks have suggested that Warner Bros may try to delay Dune 2’s release, because of the other thing making this summer busy for movies. If you somehow haven’t heard, the Screen Actors Guild and the Writing Guild of America are both on a historic strike, demanding proper payment as studios continue their push to relegate every human role into an AI-generated slog. Rather than give up a measly 2% of their income, studio heads have refused to budge, and are now reconsidering their release slate since protesting union members will not be participating in advertising runs, including the red carpet events of interviews. So, everything is in flux, and if things are not resolved soon it may have dramatic consequences for the future of film. The delay of Dune 2 is one thing, but the indefinite halting of all movie productions could have far-reaching ripple effects. Already, studios have lost about as much money from the strike as they would have if they had simply accepted the unions’ demands. There is a vague sense in the air that, if things don’t change, we may be hurtling toward the end of this era of filmmaking.
No, when I say it’s been a slow season, I’m not speaking of having a lack of things to write about. There’s so much! Instead, the act of writing itself has been slow. Constantly changing life circumstances have often rendered me unable to sit down and hash out an idea when it comes to me, and now that I do have the time I lack the motivation. Maybe it’s because I have apparently come to my Wix data storage limit, and so it’s asking me to pay in order to keep including more images in my reviews – and, frankly, I don’t get enough attention here to justify a monthly fee. Perhaps it is that lack of attention itself: not that I’ve taken great efforts to grow this blog, but I get the sense that it has plateaued both in viewership and in my own ability to present new ideas to it. It certainly doesn’t help that Twitter, a platform I hoped I would be able to find an audience on, is absolutely crumbling under one man’s incompetence, to the point where it is no longer the recognizable brand Twitter, it is “X,” a brand that doesn’t mean anything! Or maybe I’ve just over-extended my own reach. This started as pretty simple reviews (go see, for example, my Ford v Ferrari review for how little I was offering to the conversation), but more and more I wanted to build a cohesive essay with a clear angle. Which is time-consuming! It takes thought and energy and when things are otherwise busy, it’s hard to offer those in the quantity or quality I desire in this blog. So, things have been slow, not because I don’t want to write, but because this is just no longer the priority or the passion it once was. I still like doing this! But it’s hard to dedicate the time I desire for it.
As an example, here’s a list of the ideas that have stirred around in my head for the past several months, relegated to “cool ideas!” instead of finished blog posts:
· Andor & the Slope of Fascism
· Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Letting Go of a Franchise
· The Artistry of Asteroid City, & Why Wes Anderson is Way More than an AI Trend (Patrick H Willems wound up basically making the video I wanted to write here, though if I ever do write this article it’ll be more explicitly about Anderson’s filmography. And maybe more about Royal Tenenbaums than Asteroid City)
· Analysis of an Opening: Why Gwen’s World Rules in Across the Spider-Verse
· The Mission Impossible Franchise & It’s Relationship With Women (aka there was something in Dead Reckoning that I am Very upset about)
· Indiana Jones?? Maybe?? I don’t have a ton to say about Dial of Destiny but the others would be fun to write about.
I still like most of these ideas! Multiple of which I sat down and got a page or two into them but simply never returned[1]. Maybe there’s an overhanging “what is the point” vibe going on. With the exception of Glass Onion, the last movie review I did was for Nope in August of 2022! That’s a year ago! I never even wrote about The Fabelmans, one of my favourite movies of last year! So, I don’t know. Maybe it feels like an obligation. One that I all at once feel pressured to fulfill, desire to accomplish, and one that I have no energy to act upon. It’s exhausting and frustrating. Maybe it’s that I wrapped so much of my identity in this project and I’m not sure it’s fulfilling anymore? But I don’t know how to let go of it or what that leaves of me…
But if movies are crashing and burning then they’re going to do so in spectacular fashion, and I’m going to be here to witness it. Because in the midst of all the burn-out and strikes, there has been one date shining like a signal fire in the distance. July 21st. Barbenheimer.
Okay, so what is this, and how did we get here?
At a glance, Oppenheimer and Barbie seem like movies that couldn’t be any more different. One is a serious World War 2 drama about the man behind the atomic bomb. The other is a fun pastel-ridden studio comedy about a girl’s toy. Oppenheimer’s advertising has clad it in realistic browns and serious blacks and whites. Barbie is, naturally, dripped from head-to-toe in pink – so much so that the production of the movie brought about a shortage of pink paint. But both movies were set a year ago to release on the same date, initiating an obsession with the pairing that would only grow as the fateful date approached.
Partly, it has to do with the mutual notoriety of the directors behind the projects. Christopher Nolan is perhaps the most widely-recognized filmmaker working today; simultaneously an approachable blockbuster name and an identifiably complex auteur, Nolan’s name has become synonymous not just with “big-budget action” but with cerebral films that treat the audience like adults. The last fifteen years had seen studios bend over backwards trying to recreate his success with The Dark Knight Trilogy and Nolan’s personal movies like Inception and Interstellar immediately became cultural touchstones. He is one of the few working directors who is getting funding and box office impact by his name alone – not even Wes Anderson can do the latter, despite Asteroid City’s unorthodox success. A Nolan movie, by itself, is a must-see theatrical sensation. With Oppenheimer, he is doing his first-ever “biopic,” and positioning it around a man whose legacy can live up to Nolan’s explosive reputation. Famous for doing everything in-camera and his obsession with IMAX, a Nolan movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb promises a truly once-in-a-lifetime effect that must be seen to be believed. Combine that with a truly insane cast featuring Cillian Murphey, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh, as well as a dozen or so well-known character actors in single-scene roles, Oppenheimer was always going to be a big hit.
The wild card here is Barbie. Or is it? In the terms of the podcast Blank Check, Barbie promises to be Greta Gerwig’s guarantor, the film success that convinces studios to give a filmmaker the blank check to make whatever crazy passion project they want. Greta Gerwig has long been an indie darling, acting in several off-beat French New Wave-inspired works, especially collaborating with now-husband Noah Baumbach on projects like Frances Ha, a personal favourite of mine. In 2017 she released Lady Bird, her first solo-directed project, to immediate success in the arthouse circle. From the indie mother-daughter-2000’s period piece, Gerwig upgraded to write and direct 2019’s Little Women, possibly my favourite movie from that year. Quickly, Gerwig proved herself an expert observer of the human condition, making smart movies about womanhood but also the universal ache of being alive, casting normal people’s lives in a sense of bittersweet hope. Her Little Women takes a beloved but simple and often didactic children’s book and transforms it into a poignant reflection of childhood and the pain and joy of becoming an adult. In her hands, a potential Barbie movie became more than just a Mattel ad; in the same vein as The LEGO Movie, the implication was that this would be a gateway into a deep reflection of what it meant to be human. When the trailers came out, featuring Barbie entering the real world, along with direct references to classic films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Playtime, and Gillian’s Brazil, it was clear that this would be no simple flick.
So, on one hand, the idea of the Barbenheimer double-feature was not just in the inherent humour of seeing two clearly opposing aesthetics back-to-back, but in the excitement of two dominant auteurs releasing such ambitious movies on the day. Moreover, both films promised to shake up the current movie landscape. Apart from the aforementioned excitement, this year has also been a devastating one for the long-reigning superhero and franchise dominance. Ant-Man: Quantumania was able to double its box office, but not without scathing reviews, and DC’s The Flash performed much worse while having the lack of dignity to dig up Adam West and Christopher Reeve in jarring CGI cameos. Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny cost nearly as much as the Lord of the Rings films to create and did not make its budget back, being a pretty fun and serviceable action-adventure flick without the mastery of a Spielberg behind the camera. In the world of a few years past, Indiana Jones and The Flash would presumably dominate the box office, but now they are flopping, and the studios seem confused about what they actually want. Meanwhile, here come these two auteur-driven films with largely original ideas. Barbie’s inherent name brand has done a lot to prop up its success, but that is not to discredit Gerwig’s clear prominence, without which this would easily become another boring advertisement. What’s more, Barbie takes the form of a big-budget studio comedy the likes of which have largely died out in modern cinemas. One of the movies I watched in preparation was Crazy, Stupid, Love, a star-studded romcom that largely functions by taking a lot of well-established, talented actors, and just letting them do what they do best. When was the last time we made one of those? Oppenheimer, on the flip side, mostly functions as a dialogue-focused legal drama taking cues from 12 Angry Men. Neither of these types of movies are being made anymore, but here they both are, which giant fan followings to boot. Their twin release was not just a fun idea, it represented a massive potential win for original cinema at a time when losses feel increasingly common.
At a glance, the gamble has paid off in spades. Barbie has already made over a billion dollars, and Oppenheimer is trailing close behind. That’s an absurd intake for one movie with a built-in divided audience, and another that’s a three-hour talky biopic. Rising tides have raised all boats here, probably to the chagrin of some studios. After all, Warner Bros. partly scheduled Barbie in the July slot in an attempt to take the wind out of Nolan, who had left the studio due to their streaming practices during COVID. The combined opening, however, has worked magic. Paired with Oppenheimer, Barbie has thoroughly crossed whatever gender divide the movie might have had, as suddenly the movies are a combined event. And Oppenheimer, for how alienating its format is, has gotten quite a boost from the more-accessible studio comedy in Barbie. It helps that both movies are absolutely incredible, and together end up painting a rich and complex portrait of the modern moment, showing the heights and depths of the current human condition and, maybe, offering hope of our redemption in the face of the inescapable demise we’ve created.
…Okay. But what is this?
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) is, in a way, a movie that has been in the works for a long time. Towards the start of his career, Nolan got into the idea of making a biopic about Howard Hughes. He had a finished script and was ready to move forward when Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004) came out, and Nolan dropped the idea, not intending to compete with Scorsese. But the work that he put into the biopic persisted, including a complex story format and a layered exploration of a character, and eventually Nolan got the idea to use the same structure to focus on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the infamous father of the atomic bomb. In another way, this is the same movie that Nolan has been making his entire career. His famed sophomore film Memento (2000), which catapulted him into his first taste of success, is all about self-destructive obsession, as his grimy protagonist comes undone when his own actions are revealed to him. It is a movie that questions one’s own perception, the thrust in someone to convince themselves that they are the hero and not the villain. His lesser-known follow-up, Insomnia (2002), casts Robert de Niro on the dovetail of his career as a fading cop, one who, again, finds himself fighting his own perception of events in an effort to retain his dignity and honour. For a while, before he was given the keys to the Batman trilogy and then a blank check to make the biggest spectacles ever conceived, Nolan appeared to be a director committed to these sorts of small-scale character noirs. His last gasp of this format before disappearing in a wave of high-concept action films was The Prestige (2006), a movie featuring two competing stage magicians increasingly falling into the traps of obsession. Both start the film as eager students before being slowly corrupted, and we find our sympathies in a tug-of-war as each reveals themselves nastier and more cruel than the other. The Prestige, notably, follows in the footsteps of Memento (and his less interesting debut, Following) by casting the narrative out of chronological order. In Memento, a subjective narrative in colour runs with its scenes in reverse, working backward to the center of the storytelling, while an objective narrative in black-and-white runs forward towards that same center. The Prestige complicates things further by telling its story through its two protagonists reading each others’ diaries and diving through layers of subjective storytelling, cutting to anywhere in the timeline that feels emotionally resonant. While Nolan continued to explore the impact of time on an audience, for a while he seemed to grow uninterest in his self-destructive, morally nuanced protagonists – that is, until it all came back together in Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer is at once a return to the grimy, complex protagonists of Nolan’s early work while benefitting from all the lessons he learned by making bigger and bigger studio action films. The fingerprints of his entire filmography are at work here, paying off in easily one of his best works yet. Oppenheimer is a hell of a film in any conceivable sense of the phrase. It calls its shot early, opening with an ominous quotation: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity” (By the way, I intend to fully dive into the spoilery depths of both of these movies. If you have held off seeing these movies and don’t want to hear about the thematic conclusions, then go and see them immediately because they are both incredible). Immediately, we are set in a weighty story with grand, cosmic consequences, and Oppenheimer is at the center of it. From here, the movie sets us in a chaotic barrage of timelines. We see Oppenheimer’s youth, set in colour, but contextualized by an unspecified hearing, as government officials go through Oppenheimer’s history with the man presumably on trial. In black-and-white, we are introduced to Louis Strauss, who is at his own hearing prior to his hopeful swearing-in as Secretary of Commerce. The story initially gives little context for either hearing, but our subtext from Memento suggests that our story in colour is subjective while that in black-and-white might be objective. Secondly, while Strauss does not dominate the story as much as Oppenheimer does, our context from The Prestige hints at a complicated history between two men of dubious morality.
That is, after all, the question we all ask as the story begins. What does this film expect us to believe about J. Robert Oppenheimer? This was a man who built the atomic bomb, who was responsible for the testing of the Trinity Project at Los Alamos, who famously felt he had become “the destroyer of worlds” afterward. Through the dual recollections of Strauss and Oppenheimer himself, we see a nuanced, complex picture. Oppenheimer is painted as a man of many convictions, yet a man willing to commit to very little. Government officials repeatedly interrogate him about his leftist past, questioning how someone with ties to Communist party members was allowed such authority in the most important and secret American project of the second world war. But, repeatedly, they come across Oppenheimer as a man who flirted with all sorts of ideals but refused to settle on anything. He was interested in Marxist ideas without becoming a party member, he was permissive of union gatherings without necessarily attending himself. In the heat of McCarthey-ism these associations are damning by themselves, but there is a deeper threat in Oppenheimer’s noncommittal nature. The first is his inability to think through the consequences of his actions; the film’s opening depicts his rash attempt to poison a professor with a forbidden fruit, only to quickly rush to remove the threat after sleeping on the decision. Oppenheimer is fine to operate in his wiggle room until his actions begin bringing direct harm to the people around him. But even more haunting, this first sequence portrays an Oppenheimer detached from the morality of his actions.
The first two hours of Oppenheimer largely build the tension as a series of tableau images that build up Oppenheimer, his work at Trinity, and his future opposition with Strauss, but it is the last hour that fully clarifies and complicates the narrative. After witnessing the initial Trinity test of the atom bomb in all its haunting glory and horror, Oppenheimer tries to pivot. His scientists have all called into question the morality of their actions, but Oppenheimer has always made excuses: we have to do this before the Germans do; we are only here to perform the science, we have no authority over how it’s used; this bomb will not only end this war but all wars. But as the dynamics of the situation change, Oppenheimer’s excuses grow weak. Japan, not Germany becomes the target, and the targeted cities will not even be military in focus (one particularly haunting scene depicts a politician removing Kyoto from the list of potential targets largely because he and his wife honeymooned there, as if losing Kyoto is a greater inconvenience him than it would be to everyone living there). After the fated bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer becomes an advocate for an atomic weapons armistice, being especially vocal against the development of the more powerful hydrogen bomb. But, as his accusers note, the sudden resistance against the hydrogen bomb rings hollow after the years of work he spent unquestioningly developing the atomic bomb. Why this sudden turn towards moral guilt when he seemed unconcerned with the consequences prior?
Enter Lewis Strauss. Slowly the man’s mask comes off and we see a deep bitter resentment of Oppenheimer. On one hand, this hatred is selfish – Oppenheimer publicly humiliated and refused to cooperate on his atomic initiatives, and anxious jealousy convinced Strauss that Oppenheimer had turned the scientific community against him. We see in him the self-destructive obsession of Nolan’s other protagonists. But on the other hand, Strauss spells out Oppenheimer’s contradiction in a black-and-white (ha) honesty that nobody else provides. Despite his qualms, Oppenheimer’s continued hand-wringing over the future of atomic weaponry paints him as an enigma, a father of the atomic age who went out for cigarettes and never came back. Strauss suggests that Oppy’s morality is put-upon, that the man is – like all the rest of them – simply out for power and is upset that the program has spun out of his control. Moreover, Oppenheimer wants only to be remembered for Trinity, for picking up the rock and not remembered for the snake that everyone discovered underneath. He’s more interested in science than consequence, in fame than fallout. Whether for show or for penance, Oppenheimer’s refusal to stand on any side (moral, political, scientific, etc.) has dire consequences. Kitty Oppenheimer rages against her husband for his passivity in the face of his public humiliation, and it becomes clear that these trials and judgments are Oppenheimer partaking in some sort of self-flagellation. Whether for show or for penance, Oppenheimer’s refusal to stand on any side (moral, political, scientific, etc.) has dire consequences. The men of power he runs against are similarly non-committal; Truman cares only about power, Strauss about his own success. Morality is left on the table.
Early in the development of the bomb, the movie paints a haunting image – a potential consequence of the atomic detonation where the atoms never stop reacting, leading to a chain reaction that continues until it ignites the atmosphere and kills everyone. With comedic darkness, the possibility is dismissed as a “near zero” chance. But in the movie’s final moments, Oppenheimer reconsiders. Thinking of the propulsive future of weaponry, Oppenheimer wonders if they were right all along. That perhaps the chain reaction they’ve begun can never be stopped. And if it will lead to their swift and inevitable annihilation. The audience walks out of the theatre shaken – the implications are obvious and far-reaching. What have we done to ourselves? Are the events starting in Los Alamos irredeemable? Unstoppable? And if nuclear war doesn’t kill us, what will? White men of power stand center in Oppenheimer’s narrative, men who are more concerned with their own success than with the damnable consequences their actions have. Men like Truman see fear as a weakness, men like Oppy are simply too eager about their passions to consider the lives at stake. While women are historically left to the wayside in Nolan’s scripts, it feels like no accident that the only women figures in this narrative are presented as victims in the whims of men’s vainglorious pursuits. Jean Tatlock is remembered only as the Jungian shadow of Oppenheimer’s subconscious, and it is perhaps Kitty more than J. Robert who bears the weight of his self-inflicted pity party. Oppenheimer is the darkest of Noan’s grimy protagonists, a man who may have genuine regret but is fated to live in a decaying world of his own design. And his obsession has led not just to his own death, but the death of everyone. In a shocking move from Nolan, the movie suggests that Oppenheimer’s utter passivity has resulted in the creation of the most dangerous weapons that humanity has ever conceived, and our own inevitable self-destruction.
Oppenheimer stands out in Nolan’s filmography because it is the first of his movies that feels like it has something to say. Not just about Oppenheimer, but about the human condition. The world has changed a thousand times since the atomic age, and every revolution seems to push us closer to annihilation. This is a world where the ongoing innovations in AI technology seem to be inspired solely by the desire to push more humans out of creative jobs. It’s a world where billionaires showcase their blatant stupidity for all to see, as well as their blatant evil, with little to no recourse. Oppenheimer was in a race against the Nazis, yet somehow we live in a time where fascistic thinking has renewed support. More presently, this is a period where rich elites have refused to give up a meager percentage of their shares to let writers and actors earn a living wage. In this light, Oppenheimer in particular and the Barbenheimer phenomenon in general feels like the final stand of film as a medium. A bold and glorious final stand, to be sure – but one that makes me ask, is this it? Is this the last time originality will receive such box office appeal? Or will humanity’s greed pave the way, yet again, for our own destruction? Part of the mind-blowing nature of this box office phenomenon is the way it stands against the trajectory of the last few years, and studios’ tendency towards generic franchise releases. These are both movies that prove that audiences are smart and want good filmmaking, but rather than see Barbie’s success and give women creatives more projects, studios are already trying to make a line of Mattel movies. Perhaps the bright flash of Barbenheimer is simply the last sign of light before the dark fallout that will ensue. But of course, the plight of the workers in Hollywood is hardly the only place where men’s greed for power has irrevocably corrupted things.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) is a wonderfully bizarre film. One part studio comedy, one part manifesto, and one part deep exploration of the sadness of the human condition, Barbie asks a lot of questions. After a fun prologue explaining the origins of Barbie, we are taken to Barbieland, where the Barbies are celebrated and confident and the Kens exist only in relationship to their Barbies. “She’s everything, he’s just Ken.” It’s suggested that this is an Edenic paradise, with the Barbies believing their existence has solved all issues of inequality in The Real World, but quickly things go askew. Margot Robbie’s Barbie, labeled “Stereotypical Barbie,” finds herself plagued with anxiety, embarrassment, and thoughts of death (in short, she’s most audience members walking out of Oppenheimer). In a bid to keep Barbieland from utterly falling apart, Barbie and Ken set out to The Real World to figure out what went wrong and hopefully fix things. Once there, Barbie is overcome with how imperfect things truly are, and Ken is overcome by the idea of an inversed world where men have more respect and power than in Barbieland. Before long, Ken has taken his skewed vision of patriarchy (which mostly involves horses) back to Barbieland to try to rebuild the system in his favor. Things in Barbieland swiftly fall apart from there.
Most of Barbie is a fun studio romp, but the metaphors are immediately complex and possibly even convoluted. The ongoing joke is that the Kens in Barbieland have the same amount of power and responsibility that women historically do in The Real World – that is, very little. The Kens in Barbieland take the same place that women in the vast history of film have taken, shallow side characters who exist solely through the locus of their male counterparts. Again, we might think of the way women are written in nearly every Nolan movie. But Ken (masterfully and hilariously played by Ryan Gosling) and his cohort also suggest a commentary on masculinity’s relationship with power. Ken, when we meet him, is not a bad guy. He’s kind, excitable, and passionate. His problem is that he can only see himself through the animus of Barbie. They are “boyfriend/girlfriend,” but it is clear that this relationship means significantly more to him than her (to the point where it’s almost odd that the movie defines them this way? They’re basically just Good Friends). Barbie is trying to live her life, to figure out what is going on with her and where her life is going. Ken is only interested in seeming better than the other Kens in Barbie’s eyes. And so when he is tempted by the forbidden fruit of patriarchy, he finds in it a new way to give himself definition. And with it, power. Like in Oppenheimer, fame and power are more seductive than morality. Before we know it, Ken has taken over Barbie’s dreamhouse and rendered it his Mojo Dojo Casa House, complete with brewski beers and portraits of horses. It is noteworthy how the Kens’ rule flirts between comedy and aggression, their vision of power is intrinsically silly, but it still results in the subjugation of all of the Barbies to nothing more than arm candy. The President and the Supreme Courts Justices become cheerleaders and foot massagers in the Kendom, robbed of all agency.
Predictably, there are people who have become upset at this. Benjamin “Professional Opinion-Haver” Shapiro has already ranted at length about how this movie hates men and thinks that they are evil (it is funny that Ben has given this movie so much air time than Oppenheimer, a movie directed by his favourite director, which at the time of writing he has yet to say anything about). But this accusation not only misses the entire conclusion of the story but also stands wildly against the trajectory of Gerwig’s career. Lady Bird is filled with gentle depictions of masculinity, from Lady Bird’s earnestly-trying dad depicted by Tracy Letts, to her soft-spoken but passionate teacher played by the ever-incredible Stephen McKinley Henderson. Timothee Chalamet’s depiction of Laurie stands tall in the center of Little Women as a man who, while flawed, still has virtue and value (and incredible coats). The Gerwig co-penned Frances Ha is filled with men like Michael Zegen’s Benji who could probably get a lot more flack than the movie ever gives. Even more relevantly, Gerwig’s “feminism” in these movies, far from the radical brainwashing that Benjamin “Bought and Melted a Barbie to Display His Very Mature Anger” Shapiro decries it as, is rooted in a fundamental love of humanity. Jo’s heart-stirring speech at the conclusion of Little Women speaks not just of the feminine experience, but also of a universal experience of being human. The loneliness that Jo feels is infinitely relatable. Similarly, while Lady Bird is at its core a mother-daughter story, it also speaks to the universal struggles of finding identity in an ever-changing world. It is difficult, if not impossible, to attentively watch these movies and not see Gerwig’s feminism as stemming from a general care for humanity as people, and the conclusion of Barbie is no different.
The story is in a tangle. Barbie finds herself hitting an existential wall, wanting to be more than just “Stereotypical Barbie,” who has become a symptom of girls’ insecurities (it is possible to see Ariana Greenblatt’s Sasha as, in some way, a riff on the very misaimed ‘radicalism’ that Shapiro assumes the film belongs to). Ken is trying to make his Kendom permanent, but it’s clear that his rule is rooted more in deep-set insecurity than genuine maliciousness. Far from hating Ken, the movie treats Ken as deeply sympathetic, even if he, like Oppenheimer, has let his anxieties take the driver’s seat. At this time, two events happen in near-parallel. First, America Ferrera as Gloria, a human mother who has traveled with Barbie to Barbieland, finds herself exasperated at the state of everything. She “gives voice to the cognitive dissonance of being a woman,” expressing the convoluted state of mind that she is expected to operate with in The Real World. “You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time […] You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.” In a move out of Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination (yes I’m going to quote an academic scholar in a movie about dolls, deal with it), Gloria’s words strike a chord with the Barbies and finally functions as a uniting force. Speaking out about oppression is the first step towards action; systems of power prey on silence and cannot function in vocality. It is only when these struggles are spoken allowed that the tide can change. It’s perhaps easy that this speech works in a world where patriarchy has only reigned supreme for a day or so, but the intent stands clear. Barbie, after all, has a wide audience in mind. Some have laughably suggested it to be “the most feminist movie ever made” – if anything, Barbie serves as intro-level feminism, and Gloria’s speech is the first step into a much more complex conversation the movie is letting its audience have themselves.
But it is not just the Barbies who need this moment of unity. As they hatch their plan to retake Barbieland (like, listen to this, this is at its core a very fun and silly movie), the Kens are put against each other. They go to war at the beach, fighting each other with tennis rackets and pool noodles and toy horses. Ryan Gosling sets the scene by signing a somber Ken ballad, which soon exploded into a full-on dream ballet with all of the Kens. And the choreography is phenomenal. Where the Barbies conversated about their experience with oppression, the Kens come together to sing and dance about their woes. “I’m just Ken,” they express, “anywhere else I’d be a 10.” Before long, they turn from fighting to signing hand-in-hand. Their woe becomes a boast of self-assurance. “I’m just Ken / And that’s enough / And I’m great at doing stuff.” The war ends. After all, the war was just posturing anyways. The pursuit of patriarchy was a way to grab power. The battle between Kens was a bout of insecurity. But in their self-confidence, they can put the fighting aside and begin to truly see each other as complex people with needs and failings.
The fact is, everyone actually has the same arc in this movie. As things begin to resolve, Kingsley Ben-Adir comes in with a gut-punching funny line that doesn’t read on paper but always gets a laugh. After all the absurdity, this guy who has mostly been a background Ken straightens up and says with all the sincerity of David Attenborough, “We were only fighting because we didn’t know who we were.” It’s out of nowhere and very funny, but also kind of the theme of the whole movie. Barbie forms a tear between Barbieland and The Real World because she doesn’t know who she is without the “Stereotypical” label. Ken finds himself entangled in patriarchy because he doesn’t know who he is without Barbie. The end of the movie deals with the messy work of trying to figure out who exactly we are. Barbie, with incredible patience and generosity, turns down Ken and insists that he needs to learn who “just Ken” is, just as she needs to learn who she is. Next, we see him, he is clad in a sweater that states, “I am Kenough,” indicating his move out of a parasocial need for attention and power and towards self-assurance. The move feels a little sweaty; after all, what does it mean to be Kenough? Who is “Just Ken?” But it is in itself a deep, evocative answer, a prompt to explore one’s own “Just Ken”-ness. Barbie, too, much find her ending. In a conversation with Rhea Pearlman as Ruth Handler, the Creator of Barbie, Barbie expresses that she wants to be more than just an idea, just an expression of meaning, but wants to be someone who helps make meaning. In finding herself, Barbie is going to have to find a deeper expression of what being her means. The rest of the scene features Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” set to an absolutely tear-inducing montage of family footage, all supplied by the people who worked on the film. “I used to float, now I just fall down / I used to know, but I’m not sure now / What I was made for / What was I made for?”
Far from the man-hating rhetoric that Benjamin “Has Spent Longer than the Film’s Runtime Ranting About It” Shapiro would paint the film as, Barbie expresses the fundamental anxiety of being human – but also the intrinsic beauty of being human. In a key scene early in the film, Barbie finds herself witnessing humanity for the first time, seated beside an older lady played by Ann Roth, a film legend in her own right. “You’re so beautiful,” expresses Barbie – she has never seen someone aging in Barbieland, and is immediately awed by her companion. Far from her the perfection of her plastic friends, Barbie is struck by the beauty of someone who bears their humanness with pride. “I know it!” replies Roth’s character in full confidence. Even “flaws” like aging are treated with dignity and love. Barbie doesn’t hate anyone, but seeks out a world where everyone can receive the love and respect that they deserve.
The conclusion of Barbie doesn’t feel “perfect.” As explored in the film’s representation of patriarchy, and Oppeneheimer’s in-depth depiction of the vile messiness that lies at the heart of the world, our problems are vast and hard to solve. The Barbies acknowledge openly that the Kens have been mistreated and that they need to work towards a more equal system. To reiterate, the matriarchy of Barbieland is just as flawed as Ken’s patriarchy. There is growth to be done, and the President personally apologizes to Kate McKinnon’s character who they have been in-person and behind-her-back referring to as “Weird Barbie.” They begin rethinking their system, though they stop short at putting one in the Supreme Court Justice. This comes with a joke that “soon the Kens will have as much power as women do in the real world,” which is funny but also reminds the audience of the complex situation we started with. Can we imagine a world that doesn’t exist in the imbalances of power that we have known so deeply? Partly, the tension is so tight – temptations towards power run so deep. It strikes me that Ben Shapiro sees Issa Rae’s casting as President as a “ridiculous” act of “wokeism.” When you are clinging so tightly to your own power, even something as innocuous as a Black woman as president seems like a blow against you. Moreover, even while Oppenheimer is trying to set a moral name for himself, he overlooks the damage his actions are causing. But we need to find a system where everyone receives their due dignity and respect. We have to let go of our fear of change, our fear of becoming lower. Barbie’s resolution feels incomplete in this regard, but I’m beginning to think that’s the point. At one point, Gloria feels burdened by the impossibility of making anything perfect, but her daughter Sasha has a rare about-face and insists, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better.” Barbie is only a movie – but in the same vein as Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination, art has a way of painting an image to work towards. The role of a prophet is to express the problems in the present and create a vision of what can be. Patriarchy, power, systemic violence, and the overbearing weight of the atomic age, these are overwhelming problems. It’s easy to get lost in them. When we sit in the wake of Oppenheimer, they feel insolvable. And Barbie, being only a movie, doesn’t offer easy solutions. It doesn’t fully know how to untangle the systems we are still tangled in in our own real world. But it does offer a path forward, a path towards resolution.
We are only fighting because we don’t know who we are. Power is just an attempt to control incontrollable sweeping forces bigger than us. Oppenheimer is motivated by the rise of fascism and the sweeping nature of the atomic age. But he never stops to actually consider what he believes. He never picks a side. Oppenheimer never knows who he is and so his activism is hollow and insufficient. His inconsistency betrays him. Ken’s actions are motivated by his own hollowness, his own lack of sufficiency and meaning. It is only in realizing that he is Kenough that he can let go of his attempts of control and be satisfied. Barbie failed to see Ken’s humanity, and is only starting the search for who she is, but that journey is the thing that restores Barbieland. We are only fighting because we don’t know who we are, and all of our posturing and oppression stems from a fear that the world will slip us by and that we will become vulnerable or forgotten. And the fact is, we probably will anyways. It is only in the relinquishing of public power that we find inner power and comfort. It is only in the humility of admitting, “I was wrong,” that we can reach each other on the same level. If Oppenheimer, Strauss, and Nixon ever stopped to consider the scope of humanity rather than their own interests, perhaps the world would be in a less disastrous place. And perhaps that’s our own calling for the future.
It's a terrifying world. Actors and writers are on strike and maybe movies are ending. Maybe that’s extreme. But everything brings with it change. Change is the natural state of the world, and you can either accept that or get blown in the winds trying to stop it, and inevitably making things worse. Together, Barbenheimer represents a sort of rebirth, an end and beginning, a death and resurrection. If we cling to power as an anchor, we will burn not just ourselves but everyone else in the fallout of our selfishness. It is only in letting go of power, of seeing the fundamental humanity of those around us, that we can begin to work towards mutual resolution. That is how we rebuild paradise, how we move beyond the cracks of Barbieland and towards a world that genuinely can hold everyone in equality.
And that’s the Barbenheimer experience.
[1] It’s worth noting that I do write briefer reviews on Letterboxd, the best social media site, so if you are looking for more thoughts there’s usually stuff there.
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