Fantastic Plastic: One Woman’s Reflections on Barbie as the Cinematic Event of the Year
With apologies to Mr. Nolan, Greta Gerwig is the auteur this specific moment in time needs and deserves. Since 2017, Gerwig has written and directed two feature films in two wildly different genres that have netted nine above-the-line Oscar nominations. And yet, while Barbie is an object of much enthusiasm, there exists nowhere near the same level of reverence for its artistic promise. A truth I must admit I find confounding.
I spend more hours at the movies in a single year than many people will in a decade or more. I am a creature of bright lights in dark rooms. I swoon over film grain and I have the “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” cartoons inked on my body. And as a movie person™, I want all original cinema to do well at the box office. Film is a collective art and my ass will definitely be in a seat for Oppenheimer opening weekend — I already have a ticket to see it projected in 35mm, duh! But here’s the thing — Oppenheimer was locked in as “the movie event of the year” from the moment it was announced. It was automatic. And in spite of its pedigree and cast and even my own interest in it, I just don’t subscribe to that narrative. Oppenheimer will be well made and well acted and three hours long… and more than likely extremely fucking bleak.
It’s a time-tested recipe for critical success, Oscar nominations, and, historically, extremely in my wheelhouse. I spent years going to Sundance with the express desire to be emotionally devastated. Sobbing in the cinema is one of my most cherished pastimes! But I still can’t muster enthusiasm for Oppenheimer that’s even remotely on the level of my hype for Barbie. Maybe it’s because Nolan hasn’t made a truly outstanding film since Inception — which came out in 2010, by the way. Or because Dunkirk wasn’t even the best of the three Dunkirk-related films released in 2017; that would be Their Finest. But I think more than anything, it’s that I can’t finish the sentence, “Barbie is my most anticipated film of the year,” without someone saying, “What about Oppenheimer?”
To that, I can only say, “Ask yourself, what about Barbie?” Much like Eminem in the climactic rap battle in 8 Mile, I know everything Oppenheimer has to offer me, and I’m not mad at it. But I am living for the mystery of what exactly will be revealed to me in Barbie. This is a product tie-in movie that looks clever and subversive and thoughtful. It somehow has a multiversal component and a narrative trajectory that contemplates perfectionism and mentions in Architectural Digest about its aesthetics. J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a historical life. Making a sweeping epic about him that serves as a commentary on the reckless potential of technology is a pretty badass story concept, but it is undeniably low hanging fruit. Transforming a children’s toy that is as reviled as it is loved into a visual buffet with mass appeal? That’s revolutionary.
With its first teaser, Barbie gave us a nod to one of the most iconic scenes in film history, and co-opted it to capture the enormity of Barbie in the culture. In its second teaser, Barbie introduces us to Barbie World and a colorful cast of Kens and Barbies living a seemingly idyllic life that’s bursting with color and whimsy, and the sense that Margot Robbie’s Barbie might still be on the brink of asking what else is out there. Finally, in the main trailer, we get a sense that something has changed for Barbie — the proverbial call to adventure — and she’s going to navigate her existential crisis as a stranger in a strange land. That’s a huge swing. How lucky are we to live in a world where not only studio execs, but Mattel execs signed off on it? The MCU might be in decline, but bless them for furthering the model of “beloved indie director takes on an iconic franchise and hopefully makes it weird and great.” See: Taika Waititi and Thor, or Ryan Coogler and Black Panther. Curiously, it’s a bit of an inverse of Christopher Nolan’s famed deal to keep making Batman movies in exchange for the funding for Inception, but that’s a tangent too far. Back to the point about bringing the weird.
At this point in my moviegoing and film criticism career, I am less concerned with perfection than I am with emotional honesty. I will never not be a fool for production value, but more and more I find myself going back to the things that are a little bit raw. Steven Speilberg’s The Fabelmans, is a prime example. It was technically perfect, it followed every rule and hit every beat, I can’t really fault it, but it left me cold. RRR, on the other hand, was a massive, often silly, certainly overdone epic that absolutely soared. Against considerable odds, it brings you into it entirely with a big beating heart on its sleeve and unabashed joy in cinema.
If the massive, and deserved, success of Everything Everywhere All At Once taught us anything, it’s that we, as a collective, still need healing. From the shared trauma of a pandemic and inflation and extreme weather and wars and division and all the rest of it. Few things have appreciated in value in recent years more than catharsis and kindness. The trend has actually been so strong in popular culture that a subgenre has sprung up around it: Nicecore. In addition to EEAAO, consider Ted Lasso, Paddington, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, The Great British Bake Off. Those warm fuzzy feelings are why I’ve started tearing up at car restoration shows. And they are also at the heart of Gerwig’s work.
Within the realm of Nicecore there is a sub-genre I like to call “Millennial Hurt Feelings Filmmaking.” Everything Everywhere All At Once is a prime example of this: after traversing the multiverse and seeing every possible version of her life, Evelyn finds the strength to apologize to her daughter, to appreciate her husband, to see the beauty in laundry and taxes. It’s a radical act of catharsis that is common to many personal films we’ve seen from millennial filmmakers. Another prime example? Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.
Unlike EEAAO, Lady Bird is told from the perspective of the child, but the tenuous thread between mother and daughter is ensconced at the very center of the narrative. The film consistently frames these two women — though we meet them when they are miles apart — to highlight all the ways they are similar. Something Lady Bird only realizes later, after her mom makes her own effort to express all the things unsaid between them. The film, unlike its protagonist, has the benefit of distance. Gerwig, as its author is worlds removed from teenagerdom in the early aughts, and adulthood has shown her, as it does all of us, the ways in which the push and pull of moms and daughters nearly always stems from too much love, not disappointment. And so, Lady Bird celebrates the agony and the ecstasy of being a daughter with the kind of perspective that youth rarely gives us in the moment — it’s why nostalgia is so powerful. It gives us the chance to reframe and appreciate those things that we missed in the moment. Part love letter to the early 2000s and part mediation on what it means to come of age, it’s the kind of picture that makes you walk out of the theater and call your mom.
Her next film, Little Women, contemplates womanhood through an entirely different lens. With her adaptation, Gerwig achieves the remarkable feat of besting the beloved ‘94 version in nearly every category (Claire Danes will always be the supreme Beth), and elevating some of the themes scholars have long pointed to in Louisa May Alcott’s text. Most takes on Little Women are completely Jo-centric and don’t interrogate the other March sisters deeply enough to bring real heft to their stories. Gerwig, on the other hand, elevates even Amy to a level of supreme empathy and insight. It’s not just that Jo and her sisters are navigating life amidst the turmoil of the Civil War, it’s that they are navigating life as women amidst the turmoil of the Civil War. Where Lady Bird rebelled against the monotony and safety of life as a teenage girl in Sacramento, the March sisters’ existential crisis is one defined by their own will to defy what the world tells them is possible. It’s a scenario so formidable that even Jo loses her resolve, and when she does, Amy assures her that they have the power to confer meaning and importance on women’s lives and stories by living them and telling them. How simple, and yet, lofty an ambition.
And so, it is with tremendous anticipation that I wait to see what Greta Gerwig mines from the history and narrative of a figure as iconic as Barbie. Barbie, as a doll, holds cachet with even Jo March-minded young women and girls because Barbie can do anything. Give that platform to the woman who elevated one of the most beloved stories in American literature and you must understand that I believe Barbie will be everything.
