BARBENHEIMER: OR HOW I FELL IN LOVE WITH GOING TO THE MOVIE THEATER AGAIN

Two years ago today, my wife and I took advantage of our children being away for the weekend with their grandparents to take part in the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer- taking in a double feature comprised of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It was an experience that lived up to the hype. These are two very different movies, appealing to very different audiences. They shared the same theatrical release date, neither one willing to budge. Rather than being viewed as competitors, these two films became unlikely companion pieces, and two of the best films of 2023.

While the portmanteau of Barbenheimer suggests watching Barbie first and Oppenheimer second, my wife and I made the wise choice of flipping the viewing order. Watching Barbie second may seem odd to do after a heavy film like Oppenheimer, but the magic of the former would have been completely ground down by the weight of the latter. If you ever wish to tackle Barbenheimer on your own, watch the heavy film first and top off your experience with some pink frosting.

OPPENHEIMER

I admire Christopher Nolan’s work and, while I haven’t seen all of his films yet, I have yet to be disappointed. Oppenheimer is Nolan’s first foray into biographical filmmaking, and the screenplay was adapted from a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who was critical to the development of the first atomic bomb for the United States during World War II. Similar to his previous film Dunkirk, the historical setting strips away much of Nolan’s trademark heady brand of thriller, but it affords him the opportunity to showcase just how intense history can be.

The narrative hops back and forth in time between Oppenheimer’s journey to being recruited for the Manhattan Project and the creation of the first atomic bomb, and his post-war life, where his credibility and security clearances are threatened in the McCarthy era due to his loose prior associations with communists. This is a three-hour film that covers over 30 years of Oppenheimer's life, but it never feels like too much. Oppenheimer’s pre-bomb life informs his outlook on the Manhattan project, which takes up somewhere around half of the film’s runtime. At times, it is tricky to piece together the order of the post-war narrative, a game of cat and mouse between Oppenheimer and the ambitious but insecure Lewis Strauss, head of the US Atomic Energy Commission. This lesser-known part of Oppenheimer’s story, however, saves the film from being just a straight-forward making-of-the-bomb tale. It gives the audience something to ponder and find connections to as the back-and-forth narrative structure plays out. It also shows that the film’s subject was relevant well after that which he is most known for.

The cast of this film is phenomenal. Every award nomination and win were deserved. Cillian Murphy’s weary features and intense eyes help convey Oppenheimer’s struggles and triumphs with such nonverbal skill that this could have been a silent film and just as impactful. Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty is forceful as a simmering pot that blows its lid in a much-anticipated and satisfactory way. Robert Downey Jr embodies the vengeful Strauss, who attempts to use Oppenheimer as a straw man to satisfy both his professional goals and personal vendettas. The rest of the players add just the right amount of layered tension, drama, and intrigue to keep this locomotive moving.

Nolan does a superb job of conveying the mixture of motivations for creating the bomb and how they weigh on those involved. The scientists feel the pressure from the military to figure out the bomb before the Nazis do. It’s a blend that is one part nationalism and two parts the fact that the fate of the world hangs in the balance if the Americans don’t finish it first. There is also internal and professional pressure on the scientists who are determined to figure out the bomb because they should be collectively smart enough to do so. With Uncle Sam both counting on them and judging their progress, pride and ego raise hurdles for the team to overcome as they prioritize hypotheses on the next right step.

Best of all is how the Manhattan Project team come to digest the consequences of their work. The mission is to create the bomb no matter what, so once they do, there are varying levels of realization and guilt expressed about the destruction the bomb is capable of and the horrific consequences that may follow its detonation. Only after they prove that they can are these top scientists free to contemplate if they should have. History tells us, in a cruel twist of fate, that Nazi Germany never actually engaged the building of an atomic bomb in the way the United States government believed it had, but our characters and their historical counterparts had no idea until much later.

I want to reiterate that this film really moves. This is impressive, as most of the runtime is dedicated to the build-up to the bomb. The pace falters slightly in the closing 20 minutes, but I never grew restless because neither my internal clock nor my bladder tapped on my brain at any time to register how long I had been sitting in one place. It will leave you feeling exhausted, however, because of the effective build-up and release of tension. Nolan succeeds at making the audience wait in desperate anticipation for an outcome that we already know to be true. The added emotional weight tacked on by living through history with these people and seeing their struggles behind the scenes rounds out what some of us remember from a few paragraphs in a high school history book by humanizing history. It’s quite a feat.

BARBIE

Where Oppenheimer is a moody marathon, Barbie is an exuberant sprint. After decades of rumors of a live-action Barbie movie, Mattel gave the greenlight to Margot Robbie’s production company with indie-darling Greta Gerwig at the helm as director. That alone should have told the world that Barbie was going to defy expectations, but we got so much more as well. With its wit, play on gender roles, and surprising intellectual depth for being based on a fashion doll, Barbie turned out to be the movie nobody saw coming and the movie we needed at the same time.

Margot Robbie stars as “Stereotypical” Barbie, a doll who conveys the iconic look of Barbie in the minds of millions. Barbie lives in Barbieland, where she appears as a living representation of her real-world plastic counterpart. Here all the dolls are named Barbie (well, almost) and no one questions it. All the male dolls are named Ken (save for one Allan), and Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) pines for Robbie’s Barbie to the point of going to extremes just to get her attention. One day, Stereotypical Barbie wakes up with flat feet and strange existential thoughts. The other Barbies send her to see “Weird” Barbie (who had her hair cut and her face markered by her owner), who sends her to the real world to investigate an apparent issue with Stereotypical Barbie’s owner. Beach Ken tags along for the ride, where the dolls discover a world completely opposite of their own.

This film is an absolute gem, and possibly the first Millennial masterpiece. Gerwig and her husband put so much wit and sass into the script, but the surprising thing is just how much heart Barbie has at the same time. Gerwig doesn’t shy away from irreverent skewering of Barbie the product or Mattel as a corporate entity profiting from a (at times) problematic product. Stereotypical Barbie’s journey to the real world causing a ripple effect and a desperate attempt by Mattel brass to get her back in the box is smart and silly all at the same time.

While Mattel deserves major kudos for greenlighting a film that puts so much under the critical microscope, it was likely made easier by the way the film explores Barbie’s relationship to girls who did enjoy them as children. Some girls grow up and express interest in fashion, makeup, and maintaining a Barbie-esque figure, while other turn against the Barbie ideal as they come of age. Barbie offers a multi-generational exploration of what it means to age out of Barbie, as the process changes with each successive generation.

All of this would have seemed too heavy-handed for a Barbie movie, so Gerwig balances all of this exploration of meaning, purpose, and humanity with a hilarious subplot involving Beach Ken discovering patriarchy in the real world, and taking it back to Barbieland. He uses it to take over the woman-run world, but conquering Barbieland means nothing to Beach Ken if it’s not paired with winning Stereotypical Barbie’s affection. Gosling doesn’t hold back in portraying Beach Ken as an immature and insecure also-ran in a matriarchal society. It’s a clever play on gender roles, because Gosling’s character mopes and swoons like a stereotypical teenage girl smitten with a high school hunk. His imported patriarchy takes several core elements of toxic masculinity and rightly serves them up for laughs by exposing them through the absurd posturing of dozens of metrosexual Ken dolls.

I can’t end this portion of my post without praising Margot Robbie. She epitomizes the look of Barbie and her performance is always on point. While Barbie’s early missteps in the real world are played up for laughs, her journey slowly and deftly transitions to a character that we can sympathize with and have pity for. The more she comes to understand, the more pain she feels, which makes her more real than Barbie dolls were meant to be. Girls use Barbie for escapist playtime, but even Barbie can grow up and wrestle with heavier things it seems. Put me in the camp that believes Robbie deserved an Oscar nomination for her performance. The Academy only nominates so many people for acting awards, so maybe they overlooked Robbie because of the assumption that portraying Barbie isn’t difficult. Robbie’s nuanced performance proves such an assertion wrong.

BARBENHEIMER

Great films are not the norm. Summer isn’t exactly the time of year associated with great contributions to cinema either. What are the odds that two great films would share the same mid-summer release date, achieve praise from critics and the general population, dominate the box office, and be frontrunners for awards season right out of the gate? That is what happened with Barbenheimer. Christopher Nolan fans and film snob cinephiles were already anticipating Oppenheimer, so there should be no surprise that it brought the goods- it’s what Nolan does. As the release of Barbie crept closer, more and more positive buzz built around a property that people were right to be guarded and cynical about. Despite its sizeable Hollywood budget, Barbie was an underdog until it wasn’t.

Barbenheimer is an odd pairing on paper, but both are brilliant works from exceptional directors who stand among the best of their respective generations. The debate rages on as to whether corporate-sponsored IP films are the future of cinema (not to mention whether that might even be a good thing) or if studios need to return to innovative creators whose voices drive unique stories that challenge conventional mass-market sensibilities. But let’s not forget that Oppenheimer had a large studio budget as well, and Christopher Nolan, despite very intentional in his auteur work, has been in vouge in Hollywood for a while now (Batman, anyone?). And despite Barbie’s unoriginal source material, Gerwig is hardly a studio system director.

Oppenheimer may have won the lion’s share of awards (including the top prize on Oscar night), but I dare say that Barbie will be remembered longer and more fondly. Oppenheimer may produce a more consistent emotional response upon repeat viewings, but it’s the kind of great heavy film that you won’t return to regularly. Conversely, Barbie is the kind of escapist comedy that is easy and satisfying to reach for, even if subsequent viewings won’t match the feelings of awe and surprise of your first watch. And yet, how spoiled are we that both of these fantastic films came out at the same time and challenge us to examine either our past or our present so subtly and powerfully?

My wife and I spent over five hours in a movie theater to watch these films back-to-back (second only to the time I spent around 13 hours in a movie theater for a Lord of the Rings trilogy presentation). Beyond the powerful drama and gut-busting comedy, this double-feature was something I didn’t know I needed. Everyone in the theater walked out of Oppenheimer feeling a little shell-shocked, but the audience reactions to Barbie reminded me of the importance of cinema as a communal experience.

My wife is a very emotional person, so it didn’t surprise me when she teared up at the tender parts of Barbie. Hearing similar emotional responses around us in the theater, informed me that my wife’s response wasn’t an isolated incident inherent to her tendency to get misty-eyed. It showed that Barbie’s resonance was broader than I realized. It’s been a while since a movie in the theater hit in that way. My wife and I shared this moment not just with each other, but with everyone else in the theater as well. I was glad to be part of the experience, because it heightened the moment and left a lasting impact. What a testament to the power and value of cinema.

OPPENHEIMER FINAL RATING: 4 out of 5

BARBIE FINAL RATING: 4 out of 5