SPOILER ALERT: Contains spoilers for both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”, not that you should be particularly concerned about spoilers for the latter. We all know the atomic bomb exists.
I have been totally and utterly obsessed with “Barbenheimer” as a concept for months. To the uninitiated: it’s an internet meme where you’re supposed to view the simultaneous July 21st release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a singular cinematic event.
I am a person who appreciates sharp contrast, and the irony that has saturated popular culture has proven itself totally irresistible to me.
Seeing both the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer back-to-back was a viewing experience that I expected to be jarring, and I went into it with that belief, but what was truly the most jarring of all is how the two films managed to contrast in a way that was, in fact, not at all jarring.
The author, dressed in appropriate “Barbenheimer” attire.
The first film, Barbie (directed by Greta Gerwig), actually is about a revolutionary of unparalleled vision (Ryan Gosling) who established his ideal utopia (fully automated, post-scarcity, luxury Kenocracy) only to have it completely undone by a conspiracy of outsiders desperate to use his character flaws (his jealousy and desire for Barbie’s approval) as a crowbar through which his vision could be pried apart and himself reduced from Philosopher-King to “just Ken”. It’s Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” adapted as a Shakespearean tragedy wrapped up in neon pink.
It’s not, but the film is so ideologically ham-fisted and on-the-nose that it ventures directly into Poe’s Law territory–the idea that satire can be mistaken as sincere and sincerity as satire, especially in the internet age. Am I meant to cheer for the tweenage socialist who publicly dresses Barbie (Margot Robbie) down as a “fascist” and reduces her to tears? Or am I supposed to see this character as a critique of the modern Twitterite left and it’s propensity to turn everything into a reductive deathmatch in which nuance is fundamentally impossible? I’m fairly sure of the answer as intended by the writer, but the fantastic thing about art is once it’s created it is largely out of the creators hands.
Anyone (Ben Shapiro) who is critiquing this movie as a “woke disaster” from the right is totally missing a wide-open layup. His take is indicative of the absolute joyless cultural nadir that both the left and the right exist within the Algorithmically Curated Cyber Nihilist Clown Hell Ego Prison From Which There Is No Escape (the zeitgeist in which all of us live), the existence of which made this movie possible in the first place.
Beyond the total lack of self awareness in some of the writing, a lot of it is also extremely funny. Greta Gerwig is a very talented director and producer. I was crying laughing multiple times throughout the film and would recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor. Ryan Gosling steals every single scene he’s in with his immaculate portrayal of America’s most famous “himbo” in a way that deserves genuine Oscar merit, Ken. Margot Robbie was perhaps the perfect person to cast as Barbie, bringing just enough of her “Suicide Squad” unhingedness to the role to make every funny line hit nearly as intended. The supporting cast–Kate McKinnon, Will Farrell, Michael Cera–shined in a way they (at least in the case of Farrell and Cera) haven’t in years.
It ends with a more nuanced tone than the rest of the film, and even though by that point Gerwig’s writing totally devolved into a self-obsessed V-for-Vendettaesque monologue about the immortal nature of ideas, that actually provides the backdrop for the funniest part of the movie: the sheer contrast between this point and the fact that this is ostensibly a movie about a children’s toy.
In a way I can’t totally explain, this actually sets up Oppenheimer without skipping a single beat.
Oppenheimer is a fantastic biopic about a multifaceted, perhaps even Ken-like character in J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) in which he is painted neither as a hero nor as a villain but rather as a complex human with the same varying motivations as any of us have. It’s about a person who has had an experience you haven’t–ushering in the nuclear age and being responsible for the deaths of thousands at the hands of the atom bomb–and reacting to it in a way that you might (existential despair and complex reflection, grappling with moral issues that don’t have a clear solution).
Some of the cinematography is among the best I’ve ever seen, particularly the scene in which they actually conduct the trinity nuclear test. In that scene you almost forget what exactly it is you’re watching: the silence when the bomb detonates is deafening, contrasted with the violent visuals of the fireball and the intimate focus on each of the characters (particularly Oppenheimer himself) before the staggering reality of what has been unleashed comes over you and the characters on screen at the same moment. A wave of realization that shows perfectly that the now that exists is different from the now that was moments ago. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon in particular as standout supporting cast members.
Nolan said it was a horror film, and it kind of was. It’s a good look at nuclear reality that hasn’t been done much in the post-cold war world.
There was a singular moment in the film that those pedantic enough to complain about historical inaccuracy will find damn near intolerable. In a scene filled with flag-wavers in 1945, they anachronistically hold 50-star American flags, the likes of which were not adopted for another 15 years. It’s minor detail, yes, but in a historical film it’s an oversight that does indeed stick out.
Overall I’d give the entire experience a hearty two thumbs up. I would recommend both movies with the caveat that you will bring the outside world into both, and you should as neither is properly understood without it. Regardless of personal ideology, anyone who refuses to take themselves too seriously will be able to find something to enjoy about both.
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