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I meant it when I said that Barbie
and Oppenheimer might just be masterpieces. And as amazing as
that is, it's even weird that my quips about them being „the
perfect double feature“ ended up being not too
far off the mark. I know that, on a purely surface level, that idea
seems nuts. Oppenheimer
is an old-school, grande
historical procedural set in the mid-20th
century that deals with quantum physics, the devastation of war, and
fears of the literal annihilation of the entire planet, with a somber
tone and sound design to match. Barbie
literally sprays glitter at the camera, has a production design
decked out in the most deliberately plastic sets you can imagine, and
is snappy and fun and filled with wink-wink-nudge-nudge metahumor.
While Oppenheimer obsesses over igniting the atmosphere, Barbie is
(at least at first) only concerned with her feet. And cellulite.
But
once I'd left my first screenings and starting scratching at the
surface just a little bit, it struck me that both films are, at their
core, remarkably astute and challenging examinations of power, power
structures, and their inherently corrupting influences on both
societies and the individuals within them. And also, of course,
patriarchy.
The
patriarchy part is certainly more explicit in Barbie.
We are presented at the start with an alternative Barbieverse where
gender roles are entirely flipped; women (not ALL of whom are named
Barbie) hold exclusive access to power and prestige and define the
society they exist within, whereas the men (not ALL named Ken) are
conditioned to define themselves solely around what attention they
receive from their assigned Barbie. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling
might be the central narrative Barbie-Ken pair, but there's a bright
and varied supporting cast around them to accentuate the established
matriarchy.
Much
of this is conveyed through phenomenal production design, easily the
year's best to date. Barbieland is a masterful use of taking a
mishmash of pop culture IP and shaping it into a clear and coherent
design that very much feels like a place that could exist. The extra
effort to have things just "happen," to have characters
move the way dolls do when being picked up and put down, are
wonderful to watch, especially in the first act. It is "unreal"
in its effect, but in a self-consistent way that allows your brain to
buy in, which is what any fantasy film needs to do. It's no wonder
the movie hurries so fast to get back there after its
real-world-centered second act.
The
screenplay is also aces, packed to the gills with sharp, observative
humor than goes well beyond the most obvious, self-referential,
„Mattel makes the rules“ jokes everyone knew was coming. The
beginning montage features an extended clapback at the heinous
Citizens United ruling, an early real-world scene provides a
fantastic backdoor dig at genital-obsessed transphobia, we get
insanely clever use of „Closer to Fine,“ and there's even a dig
at the Snydercut weirdos we were all forced to think about from a few
years back. All stuff I was absolutely not expecting to get out of a
Barbie film, but I am pumped it's there.
The
central force, though, is the divergent arcs of Robbie's Barbie and
Gosling's Ken, a humorous take on a reverse Innocence Lost/Power
Gained dynamic. Ken's first exposure to patriarchy- and to the notion
he could actually REVERSE the disempowerment he's felt without being
able to name it- is literally treated like a drug or virus, entering
an untouched, unprotected system with no defenses to hold it back.
This is the direct, textual explanation for how Ken is able to
corrupt all of Barbieland with his newfound (and exceedingly
piecemeal) knowledge. It's the pink-and-pastel version revealing how
marginalization of a group can all too easily reproduce itself within
the marginalized group and directed onward towards others. Ken's
response to a realization of his previous disempowerment almost
instinctually is.....to re-create that same imbalanced power dynamic,
but just in reverse.
However,
it's also far more nuanced and complex than the simple „man-hating
feminism“ critiques that the film was always going to have tossed
in its direction. Yes, Ken reacts from a place of pain, and instead
of rectifying the genuine mistreatment of the Kens merely replaces
one wrong with a worse one. But as the film clearly understands, this
dynamic, which repeats itself with depressing frequency in our own
world, usually (though not always!) comes from an unconscious part of
ourselves; we (usually) don't actively seek to do harm, but when we
react out of ignorance or instinct, we often do anyway.
The
film is not able to offer a wholly satisyfing, in-world solution to
this; the Barbies retake control, but aren't yet willing to
contemplate full-scale Ken-quality, while a man remains in control of
the real-world company. The focus, in the end, is on a more radically
individual self-realization as a key to freeing oneself from toxic
dynamics. Messy, complicated, often achy, but necessary.
This
lack of a more radical in-world shakeup is one reason why some argue
that Gerwig was, in the end, unable to make something deeper or
meaningful than „just a toy commercial.“ And there were
absolutely certain limitations baked into the project from the start,
let's be perfectly clear about that; this film was greenlit by Mattel
in the hopes that it will push products, full stop. That always
mattered more to them then gifting the world a great artistic
achievement. They are literally already marketing their new „Weird
Barbie“ doll, which explicitly misses the point of what made Weird
Barbie „Weird Barbie“ within the text of their own film. Corpos
will always corpo.
The
film has OODLES of queer subtext (and sometimes just text), but some
have found both that and the film's brand of feminism too white, or
that the focus on the Ken/Barbie duality pushes out trans and
non-binary persons. This is a topic I, as a cishet White man, am
particularly unsuited to tackle. But I think it does bear mentioning
that the wonderful critic Emily St. James, herself a trans women,
wrote openly about her mixed feelings about the film's gender duality
while also lauding the fact that a trans actress (Hari Neff) plays
one of the main Barbies. Could the film have tackled gender
differently? She though yes, perhaps, BUT she also said that the
final sequence of Barbie deciding to become human reminded her of
coming out as trans, and made her cry in the theater to boot.
And
she's not the only one to have that deep, visceral reaction, beyond
any standard critic of the film. Both that ending scene and America
Ferrera's earlier monologue about the burdens of just „being
female“ have touched a lot of viewers, including my own wife, who
found herself completely overwhelmed by it during our first
screening. And from what I'm seeing, a LOT of people- cishet women,
queer women, trans peoples, non-binary peoples, and even plenty of
men- have reacted to the film in similar ways. I genuinely don't
think the film would have been the smash success it is without that
reaction.
Taking
that all together, I feel that, even though I am sympatico with some
of the criticisms and do have a few structural nitpicks of my own
with the film's narrative, it's clear to me that Gerwig brought us
the absolute best Barbie film we could have possible received and
still had the official go from Mattel.
My
personal obsession with Barbenheimer, however, has come to revolve
around the dual figures of Ken and Oppenheimer, prime examples of the
corruding influence of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. In some key
moments, their characters function as near-identical twins of each
other.
Yes,
I am about to compare Ken and Robert Oppenheimer. No, I am not high.
Bear with me.
As
I've already said, both these movies are grappling with the nature of
power in extremely similar ways. Sure, the specifics are different;
reverse-patriarchy in a fictional plastic world and the WWII/Cold War
dynamic driving arms development aren't the sort of 1-1 comp you'd be
permitted to write your Masters thesis over. But, at least in the
cases of these two films, the primary male character is defined
almost entirely by an endless and contradictory internal struggle;
both desire power, recognition, and admiration, but once faced with
the prospect of actually having what they said they wanted,
they find themselves unable to cope.
Ken
is, of course, more over-the-top; every possible emotion is turned up
to 11, as he huffs and puffs and bluffs across the Mattel multiverse.
He reacts like a kid dropped into Christmas Land when he first
discovers patriarchy and male privilege, then reacts in an equally
over-the-top manner when his own shortcomings are made plain. He
didn't know what the time was when asked- if he can even tell time-
so he acquired three watches. He feels Barbie failed him, failed to
appreciate him, so he takes over her house, tosses out her vintage
Barbie outfits, and brainwashes an entire mini-state. Still not
satisfied? Might as well choreograph a massive song-and-dance number
about blond fragility that involves all the Kens.
Oppenheimer
plays a much more subtle game, but the same signs are there. Cilian
Murphy's portayal of the title figure is a masterpiece of subtle,
almost reptilian acting. There are a thousand ways his character and
reactions to events can be interpreted. He is a true cipher,
seemingly able to switch gears almost on a whim in a given situation
to try and elicit the reaction he wants. The real money question,
though, is which parts of him we see are genuine, which calculated,
and which ones the unconscious reactions of an overactive,
preoccupied mind.
After
two viewings- and I reserve the right to revisit this as time goes
on- I think the shifts in his character reflect the same deep
ambivalence to power that plagues our Ken. Unlike Ken, Oppenheimer is
VERY smart, driven, ambitious, and very much enabled by patriarchy.
His personal ego is a constant reference point throughout the film;
he isn't even hired yet by General Groves before he sits him down and
starts explaining how the entire US military apparatus has been going
about the Manhattan Project all wrong. Which is certainly A Tactic.
Indeed,
the fact that all his genuis and professional reputation ends up
devoted to the creation of the ultimate WOMD makes it all the more
fascinating that the film's opening sequence- a whirlwind tour of
young Oppenheimer's education and encounters with prominent
physicists in Europe- follows the vein of a Theory of
Everything/Beautiful Mind biopic. This even though-
whatever important research he may have done as a student-
Oppenheimer's legacy does not reside in any particular atomic theory
or technical breakthrough or crucial scientific discovery he himself
pioneered. His legacy is the bomb, but even there, his achievement
was not the literal bomb itself, but rather his overhead management
and coordination of the vast, logistical and bureaucratic maze that
allowed its construction to happen. It almost feels like a
bait-and-switch. The atomic bomb is very much not the sort of „purely
good scientific discovery“ that this kind of scientist-centered
biopic tends to focus on.
Oppenheimer
succeeds in nearly everything- for a time- and attains status, fame,
prestige, and certainly some authority. And he knows it, too; in
another scene, he quite directly claims to be a 20th-century prophet.
However, like Ken, whenever he IS in a position of power and
authority, part of him seems to lose itself in the process. A
seemingly endless stream of contradictions appear in his words and
actions. Early on, we experience Oppenheimer as not just a precocious
scientist, but also a philosophical and intellectual idealist. One
line of his- „We embrace the revolution in physics, why can't we
embrace it everywhere else“- is about as perfect a screenwriting
distillation of character motivation as it gets. But time and again,
those ideals get tossed to the side, previous associations broken off
or offered as sacrificial lambs to shady government bureaucrats, once
they become an impediment to his rise. His spontaneous decision to
just lie to Pash (a scene that positivels crackles with
malicious energy) is a case in point. As is his decision- seemingly
on the spot- to just abandon a union drive that he had every right to
pursue and had pulled loads of his students into.
His
deepest ambivalence, and even guilt bordering on masochism, is
towards the primary product of the authority and status he gains; the
bomb. In one scene, he says that humanity will HAVE to use it,
because otherwise they will never truly fear it. Later comes his
insistence is that „the scientists“ (him included) have simply
made the bomb, and carry no weight over when and how it will be used,
a sort of „washing of the hands.“ Then he's literally in the room
as its usage is being decided and he later claims to have „blood on
his hands“ as a result, even though he likely never had enough
actual clout to stop the bombing even if he wanted to. Which of these
reactions are genuine? Which are ones he's offering as justification
to others, or even to himself?
He
defends himself anew from at least some associative guilt during the
crucial securty clearance hearing in the later part of the timeline,
where he is challenged over his opposition to the H-bomb program and
gets defensive about the reservations many had about the bomb's
usage. Yet, when we go further back and see the moments where he was
offered chances to object- signing or presenting petitions, going to
the media, working government contacts, etc.- he hesitates. He tries,
haltingly, in the room with both the Secretary of War and President
Truman himself, to present a case for a more conservative, globalist
approach than the purely nationalistic arms races that ended up
happening. But even then, where he's literally in the room where
it happens, he seems unable (or unwilling) to argue what HE
thinks, to say „Mr. President, I believe this course is best
because...“ It's always „Some scientists feel,“ „some in the
community argue,“ „there are those,“ and so on.
Like
Ken, he's the dog that somehow caught a car and then didn't know what
should come next. He hides it better, of course, and in doing so is
able to retain something of that mythical air he wanted; he's
confronted several times with questions about what he, Robert
Oppenheimer, personally believes, and he always manages to never
really answer the question. He always seemed to want to be The Man of
Hour, which he literally is for a time. But the panopticon of horrors
opened up on the way there leave him with doubt, despair,
uncertainty, the feeling that perhaps he doesn't really belong, never
did, and never will, and maybe he really did guarantee the world will
end in flame.
Now,
on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, there's Lewis Strauss,
portrayed with phenomal charisma by Robert Downey Jr. His performance
is every bit the work of art that Murphy's is, and it WILL net him
the Supporting Actor Oscar. This iteration of Strauss is just as
ambitious and egotistical and driven as his counterpart. But while
Oppenheimer starts to blink once he finds himself standing in the
light, Strauss knows exactly where he wants to go and refuses to
contemplate anything getting in his way. Yes, he makes that speech
about how real power is in the shadows, but he's fooling nobody; he
wants the sun every bit as much as Oppenheimer does.
Strauss
has known struggles Oppenheimer never encountered- we have no reason
to doubt that his humble beginnings and lack of formal education have
made it a fight for him to ascend the halls of power- and that gives
him a lot more bite. He, too, is driven by fear and doubt, but it is
of an entirely different nature to Oppenheimer's. Strauss NEVER
doubts that he deserves to make it, that he BELONGS in the upper
echelons of power (A CABINET POST!). What he fears is everyone around
him not accepting that, of conspiring to deny him what is rightfully
his. So he connives, he schemes, he lies, he very adamently insists
on the (debatably) less-Jewish pronunciation of his last name. And he
seemingly never doubts that Oppenheimer and his „cult“ are out to
get him.
This
paranoid conviction is turned back on him at the very end, in one of
my favorite moments in the film. An early scene where Albert
Einstein, after speaking with Oppenheimer, seems to ignore Strauss is
revealed to have become something of a slow-burning obsession within
his mind. For Strauss, it's a catalyst for believing that Oppenheimer
turned the whole scientific community against him, thus denying him
the Cabinet post (A CABINET POST!).
And
then, right before his aide opens the door to the reporters waiting
outside, he suddenly drops the line that, maybe, they hadn't talked
about him at all. Maybe, in his words, they were focused on something
„more important.“ He then opens the door and the flashes of
cameras instantly fill the screen. There is then a cut to Strauss'
face and he clearly flinches, just for a moment.
Now,
the most immediate (and, possible, more correct) interpretation of
this is that Strauss is reacting to the flashes of light. But maybe-
just maybe- he's flinching at a much deeper cut, at being confronted
so directly with the notion that Lewis Strauss just might not be that
important to occupy the minds of the Oppenheimers and Einsteins of
the world. It's a testament to the power of Downey's acting and to
the quality of the film around him that I can find such fascinating
interpretations of a single shot, yet where it's still open enough
that I can't be too sure.
Both
Oppenheimer and Strauss are shaped by the world of pre-WWII
geopolitics and the milieu of scientific discovery they grew up in.
They are both attracted to the power, both implicit and practical,
that comes with associating with the most terrible weapons humanity
has ever created. And though this particular movie would NEVER have
said it openly, their lives are very much defined and shaped by
patriarchy, by the forms of masculinity that defined what it meant to
be a man of consequence- and that time, it was ONLY men allowed- in
mid-20th century America. They are under the same shadow
that plagues Ken, and come to....well, not equally destructive
ends. Let's be fair here. But the trajectory is the same.
Perhaps,
in the end, Oppenheimer
is making the case that it never really mattered what Oppenheimer,
Strauss, or any other individual thought about the course of the war
and the development of atomic weapons. There is a visceral power to
the first two acts of Oppenheimer,
leading up to and including the Trinity Test, which very much can be
said to be one of the most consequential moments in world history.
The combination of the editing, Göransson's dynamic score, and the
pathos in the performances makes the blood pump, offering a sense of
physical propulsion as centuries of scientific discovery in various
fields all rapidly converge on a single point of creation that opens
up an entirely new world. It is understandable that so many,
including characters in the film, lament the development of the bomb
as a horrific cheapening of pure discovery (not to mention the
real-world harm inflicted on people both in Japan and living near Los
Alamos). Yet it may very well have been inevitable. Oppenheimer was-
perhaps- merely a pawn of greater forces, the last figure needed to
put the right pieces together.
And
these forces roll onward. Nuclear war is still a threat, yes, but
when I contemplate that final image of a fire rolling across the
Earth, I begin to think on climate change, and the continued refusal
of humanity (as of this writing) to finally commit to a sane course
of action, to turn away from catastrophe.
And
all the while, the Oppenheimers find themselves trapped in horrors of
their own design, and the Kens find themselves disempowered and
trapped in unrealities, but with neither able to quite grasp what
brought them there. And even more disconcerting, there is no
guarantee they can find their way out, find a place that is healthier
for them and for the world they inhabit. Though, if we're being
honest, Ken might actually have a decent shot. Oppenheimer, I'm not
so sure.
It's
because of such deep subtleties and expansive possible
interpretations that can be read into both films that has been
watching and re-watching them such enriching experiences. I thought
Barbenheimer would be fun, but not this challenging, this enriching,
this enlightening. It's for moments like these that I stick around
and keep on going to the movies.
-Noah
Franc
