Barbie [2023]
“You don’t even know how to beach yourself off, how are you gonna beach both of us off?”
Well, everyone, it’s over. Close down the studios, cancel the projects, and throw away the scripts, because satire has been solved and Greta Gerwig has made the most biting, diligent, brutal, dexterous, and raucous social narrative possibly ever created.
Gerwig is a filmmaker with a vision and a very unique way of communicating it. It’s subtle, but her films are undeniably hers and, whether you’ve connected with her previous work or not, I think it’s fair to say that her talent has always been pretty obvious. And, if it wasn’t, with the release of her 2023 film Barbie, it’s about to be. Alongside writer Noah Baumbach, Gerwig has written the most impressive and blunt satire I’ve ever watched. While others have been blunt before [2020’s Don’t Look Up for instance] there’s an artistry to Barbie that stops it from becoming another eye-rolling, “yeah… I get it” bore. Barbie isn’t so much like getting hit over the head with a hammer as it is getting incinerated by a hyper precise rifle from several miles away. There’s a power, it’s highly destructive and obvious, but it isn’t cumbersome, it doesn’t blunder around, roughly running into walls, and it isn’t aimless. Gerwig and Baumbach knew what they wanted to say with Barbie… and boy, did they say it loud.
Barbie’s life is perfect. She lives in her dream house next to all her dream friends, wears her dream dresses, goes to her dream beach, and gets to have dream girl’s-night every night of the week forever and ever [even Wednesdays]. So, when something suddenly shifts and her world no longer feels quite… right, she must embark on a quest to put things back as they were, exposing herself [and her friends] to a larger world full of dangerous things, ideas, and… well, horses. Will she prevail and find her true self once more, or will her quest forever alter the world of Barbie Land, leaving her dreams to simply flounder and die?
If this all sounds absolutely ridiculous… that’s because it is. Barbie is one of the most outrageous films I’ve ever seen, but it uses its outrageous setting, characters and production design as narrative elements that push the story forward and meaning deeper, rather than just being frivolous and silly. Part of what makes Barbie work so well is that its setting and happenings are entirely ludicrous and genuinely hilarious without being simple, pointless, or flat catalysts. Satire is a tricky blend of getting the point across while telling an interesting and meaningful narrative with believable and genuine characters. Most entries in the genre tend to forget that the audience has to connect to more than just the point when making films like this, and that’s somewhere Barbie succeeds in spades. Everything about this world [save for a single group of kind of distracting minor-ish characters] feels entirely authentic. While it may feel a little preachy to some, those are almost certainly the exact people the film is designed to both mock and spotlight and it’s going to win several major awards while doing so… which I’m sure is just going to fan their flames.
Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Production Design, Visual Effects, Original Song, Costume Design, and possibly some acting noms are all going to be seen once awards season starts. While Barbie will certainly have some hefty competition as the year goes on, I see virtually no universe where it doesn’t walk away with the Original Screenplay and Costume Design Oscars early next year. The reason this is worth mentioning, however, is not because it’s going to win those awards, but because it’s earned them. Sometimes films come out and are instantly recognizable as “Oscar bait” [yes, 2015’s The Revenant I am talking about you]. This is not one of those. There’s something incredibly genuine about every aspect of Barbie that, despite being a Mattel branded piece of media, doesn’t feel trifled with or guided. While I’m sure they got their corporate hands on the project, Gerwig’s touch shines bright and strong in the end.
“You can be brainwashed, or you can be ugly. There's nothing in between.”
Part of this authenticity comes from the brilliance of the casting. Not only are Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling an excellent onscreen duo, but the entire supporting cast, from Simu Liu to Michael Cera and America Ferrera, all work so well together that the world feels entirely lived in and true. They rarely seem like they’re acting and, instead [I’m sure this is intentional] it almost always feels like they’re playing. Scenes don’t feel staged and blocked so much as they feel like visual representations of a group of friends sitting around a table or sprawled out on a carpet playing a game they’re all deeply familiar with. It’s difficult to name any one actor in the film without naming them all, but there’s an overwhelming whimsy to the entire production that makes the whole thing vaguely nostalgic and strangely touching. There’s a connectedness to the entire experience that I think is well reflected by the movie’s credits.
With a few exceptions, even characters given nicknames or specific monikers within the film itself are simply credited as “Barbie” or “Ken”. This allows Barbie’s messages of unity to translate in a way the surface comedy of characters repeating “Hi Barbie!” and “Hi Ken!” might not entirely suggest. It’s clever, it’s subversive, and it’s almost certainly intentional.
It’s not all pink dresses, dream houses, and neon rollerblades though. Barbie does suffer slightly from some off pacing at times and features a subplot of characters [that largely function as a single entity] who feel a little out of place in a way that I don’t think is intentional. At almost exactly 2-hours long, Barbie doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it does get close with a few sags and slightly limp blips of the plot. These are brief and minor, but they’re worth mentioning because they stand out against the rest of the film’s vibrant and wicked presentation. Vibrant, wicked, and funny I might add. I don’t know that I’ve ever laughed so hard during a film in my life. Both myself and the people I went with spent almost the entire 120-minute runtime crying for all the various and highly effective reasons the film intended.
Barbie bites, and it bites hard. This is a riotously funny film, but it’s also incredibly brutal and upsettingly true. It’s one that everyone should see. It’s, as I rarely call film, important. Women should see Barbie so that they may give voice to feelings and truths they’ve been yet unable to contextualize, or validate experiences others have denied. Men should see Barbie to gain a sense of perspective on not only historical preference, but self discovery and true being. And everyone between or beyond those two data points should see Barbie because it is both technically astounding, emotionally intelligent, culturally relevant, and probably relatable in more ways than anyone wants it to be.
If you find yourself claiming that this movie is too “woke” or “anti-men”, I encourage you to take a step back and really consider your world at large. For every voice that says this is simply a “fable” or “propaganda” or “nonsense”, there’s a myriad of little girls who look at themselves through your lens and don’t know who they are, little boys who feel things they’re afraid to express, and little theys and thems who ask themselves,
“What was I made for?”
