#Barbenheimer!

I was exceptionally busy and/or actively traveling throughout July, so it took a while for me to be able to do this right, but I’ve finally experienced #Barbenheimer, starting first thing in the morning with Oppenheimer (in genuine 70mm IMAX as Christopher Nolan intended it to be viewed), then returned to the theater for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie after a late lunch.

Since I saw both films in the same day, it seems fitting to review both at the same time.

Let’s start with Oppenheimer…

The Destroyer of Worlds.

I’m not sure where to begin with this, other than to say that I think Oppenheimer is an absolute masterpiece and one of Christopher Nolan’s best films.

Every part of its filmmaking — from the script and direction (Nolan); to the cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema); to the performances by Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Tom Conti, Gary Oldman, Florence Pugh, and literally every other actor in the film; to the editing (Jennifer Lame) and music (Ludwig Göransson) — is all, without exception, phenomenal.

It needs to be experienced.

After seeing a film as long and intense as this one, I often find myself pondering ways to make it better or at least find spots that could have been cut from the runtime to produce a tighter film. But even at 3 hours, I found the vast majority of Oppenheimer to be utterly riveting, if not entirely what I expected.

In general, I think I was assuming that the film was mainly going to be about the creation of the atomic bomb and the arms race against the Nazis (and later the Soviets). But in reality Oppenheimer is much more about the man himself — not just his intellect and the time he spent working on the atomic bomb, but his whole life, including his personal relationships, political affiliations, and many character flaws.

The entire framing of the film is built around a series of government hearings years after the Manhattan Project where Robert Oppenheimer is compelled to recount his life story and defend his associations with communist party members and even soviet spies during his time at UC Berkeley and at Los Alamos.

In spite of recognizing Oppenheimer as a great genius and instrumental figure to the Allied Forces winning in WWII, the United States government considers revoking his security clearances based on accusations that he might be a communist sympathizer and national security risk… which — unlike what most people would probably imagine given what schools teach about the HUAC and McCarthy hearings — wasn’t actually baseless.

I’ll get back to that in a second, but it is through the framing device of Oppenheimer’s security hearing (and a parallel Senate hearing to confirm Lewis Strauss, played by Robert Downey, Jr., as Secretary of Commerce for the Eisenhower administration) that we get the story of how Oppenheimer came to lead the Manhattan Project and create the world’s first successful Atomic Bomb. These flashbacks also show us Oppenheimer’s personal relationships with his wife and other women, his sometimes contentious relationships with colleagues like Albert Einstein, and his overwhelmingly leftwing, and often outright communist group of friends.

It’s usually a bad idea for filmmakers to jump back and forth in time in order to tell a coherent story, but after Interstellar, Tenet, Memento, and Inception, Christopher Nolan seems uniquely well-suited to the task, and in this case it absolutely works.

There’s so much I could say about the film, but I don’t think you really need a point-by-point rundown of the plot and in general there’s not a lot I could “spoil”. In a sense, we all know how it ends.

But there are three major takeaways that I think are definitely worth discussing:

  1. The smartest people in the world are often also the dumbest.

  2. Communists actually were everywhere (aka. Joseph McCarthy was right)!

  3. The Government sucks.

So… Let’s talk about each of these themes for a second.

Intelligent Idiots

It’s utterly indisputable that J. Robert Oppenheimer had one of the most incredible minds in all of human history. The man was, in every way this term is useful, an absolute genius.

He was also, to put it bluntly, kind of an idiot.

More specifically, Oppenheimer was incredibly naïve, careless in his associations, and paid little attention to the potential long-term consequences of many of his choices. This is as true of his personal relationships and treatment of women as it was true of his ideological interests.

While it would probably be unfair to say that Oppenheimer was personally a communist, he was often headed in the same direction.

Among a long list of bad ideas about politics and economics, one belief he seemed the most deeply committed to was the idea that with enough government power under their control, progressive technocrats planning every aspect of society would produce a better world. A world run by smart people with everyone else required to go along with their extremely smart vision is something that (I think, unsurprisingly) appeals to a lot of academics. Unfortunately… For so many reasons, it can’t and won’t work.

But that core idea is probably part of what drew Oppenheimer to communism in the first place.

And like a lot of people who believe that they’re more important and smarter than everyone else, it seems that Oppenheimer didn’t treat many of the people in his life very well — especially his wife, who had to tolerate multiple affairs and the eventual inclusion of a litany of embarrassing facts in government records (that eventually formed the basis of this film).

Apart from all that, Oppenheimer seemed to be completely oblivious to the reality that all governmental (and generally all institutional) decision-making is far more about politics and popularity than it is about rational argumentation.

Consequently, he burned bridges with people like Lewis Strauss and many of his other colleagues in ways that would eventually come back to bite him.

Having spent much of my professional life working with academics, I wish I could say this kind of behavior is surprising, but more often than not, I find that the Ph.Ds I’ve met are people who may indeed be extremely smart in a few specialized areas, but can sometimes be almost entirely useless in any other context. I can’t tell you how many highly decorated intellectuals I’ve met over the years who barely know how to use email or function like normal adults, and who are so stuck in their heads that basic, practical aspects of human nature and physical reality aren’t allowed to penetrate their “perfect” theoretical models of how the world should be.

It’s fascinating to watch these kinds of character traits play out to their natural end in Oppenheimer.

McCarthy was Right

Most of us are taught in school that Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade was the product of paranoia — a “red scare” that was always divorced from reality.

Not so.

While I would always strongly condemn the US Government policing people’s speech and ideas, the fact of the matter is, McCarthy was essentially right. Communists genuinely did infiltrate American Universities, media outlets, the entertainment business, government and other positions of culture-shaping authority all over the US, and worse, many were actively spying and committing espionage on behalf of the USSR.

Oppenheimer’s focus on political hearings brings to light Robert Oppenheimer’s life-long associations with communists and former communists, including his brother & sister-in-law; his wife Kitty; his lover Jean Tatlock; and several academic colleagues at UC Berkeley.

It also explicitly calls attention to Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist actively working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos while spying for the Soviet Union.

Robert Oppenheimer’s personal convictions — at least according to the film — seem very loosely defined at best, which is part of why he was ultimately cleared of any suspicion of anti-American activities, but his naivete and sympathy to communist ideas led him to be pretty lax in protecting the secrecy of information surrounding the development of the atomic bomb. In the end Lewis Strauss was probably right (albeit for the wrong reasons) to recommend that Oppenheimer lose his security clearance, although those actions made him a villain in the eyes of much of the scientific community and among the general public.

Ultimately, the film doesn’t stake out a hard position on whether or not the hearings or Oppenheimer’s relationship with communist party members were good or bad (which is a point strongly in the film’s favor, in my view), but because it doesn’t shy away from the truth, it goes a long way to dispel the myth that there weren’t really that many communists or spies in the US.

There were. And academia is full of the same garbage ideas and even still home to some literal spies, which brings me to the last big theme of the film:

Government Sucks

This point is bigger than anything to do with just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but I do want to talk about his treatment at the hands of the government in general.

As I said above, everything the state does is the product of political decision-making, not rational deliberation. What this means is that you cannot trust the state to do what’s right or even what makes sense, but you can generally trust the state to treat people poorly and discard them when they are no longer of significant use to the people in power.

Robert Oppenheimer’s stupid (and generally incoherent) political values aside, the US Constitution guarantees everyone the right to think, believe, and say whatever they wish.

There’s no excuse for targeting someone for retribution based on their views, and yet that’s largely the reason Oppenheimer was subject to the review hearings in the first place — not because the government had many legitimate reasons to doubt his loyalty or think he was actually a spy.

But again, the fact that government sucks extends well beyond the hearings. It also sucks because it callously uses people primarily to harm and destroy other people — especially in the context of warfare.

Oppenheimer seems to have spent much of his time at Los Alamos scrupulously evading the most likely moral consequences of his research. He often repeats the idea that the nuclear bomb will usher in the end of all wars, but anyone with a cursory understanding of history and politics should know how silly that idea actually was. Once he saw the full destructive power of what he’d unleashed, and especially once it’s actually used (twice) in Japan, Oppenheimer is overwhelmed by the horror of it all… but I mean… what did he think he was building?

In the end, many of the Los Alamos and Chicago-based scientists working on the Manhattan Project signed a letter advising against the use of nuclear weapons, as they all understood how incredibly destructive it would be — and thus, that it would be impossible to limit civilian casualties.

But… Of course the government was going to use the bomb. It’s a weapon they spent billions of dollars developing. It was never just a science experiment.

Believing that the state will take care of you, appreciate you, and use your work only for good is… well… ridiculous.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of filmmakers that I generally hate, but which other filmmakers tend to rate very highly because of their use of imagery and willingness to break storytelling norms. But here’s the thing… Film is not merely a visual medium. It’s an amalgamation of all of the arts — writing, visual design, cinematography and sound recording, physical performance, stunts and special effects, pyrotechnics, animation and visual effects, music, and non-linear editing.

The filmmakers’ filmmakers are often people who focus on one or two of those elements (usually cinematography and actors’ performances) at the expense of virtually everything else.

For example, I intensely dislike Terence Malick (as one representative of the point), because while his films always look very good, his actual stories are often incoherent and thematically pretentious while, in fact, being quite banal. Pretty imagery is not enough to make a great film.

Oppenheimer is every bit as visually exquisite as any film I’ve ever seen, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a compelling script about a complex and fascinating subject, with masterful performances, a gorgeous and effective score, and incredible editing — all working in service of an important and interesting story.

Now… If you’re expecting Oppenheimer to be a bunch of guys blowing stuff up in the desert, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. But if you want an absolutely brilliant film with stellar performances and an amazing blend of imagery, sound design, and music… Please go see this film in the largest and best format you can find.

But with all that said… Now for something completely different.

Barbie Girl

Flawless Political Satire…?

First, let me say something obvious: Barbie is not in the same league as Oppenheimer.

The only reason I’m writing about it now, here, and not in a completely separate review, is because it seems only fitting given the #Barbenheimer meme that brought it an over $1 Billion haul at the box office.

Thanks in part to the studio’s own marketing campaigns, Barbie has been the subject of some controversy on social media, with various pundits making it a culture wars issue. Tons of articles have been published at this point either praising or condemning the film for its politics.

While I’m not surprised to the slightest degree that Barbie became a political football, especially since there were so many instances of the Hollywood press deliberately stoking this kind of audience antagonism, some conservative pundits (like Ben Shapiro with his 43 minute “review” and subsequent follow-up) seemed to be comically unhinged about the whole thing — and of course, those reactions only sparked even more contemptuous think pieces from people on the left, defending the film.

This kind of outrage cycle is tiresome, and normally I’d try to get to the theater to see a movie like this before I saw a thousand YouTube videos and articles about it. Sadly, in this case, that was unavoidable, but I still tried to go in with as open a perspective as possible.

Here’s what I can tell you:

First, the film is visually gorgeous. I would be shocked if the production designer, Sarah Greenwood, isn’t nominated for an Oscar, and it would deserve it — particularly for “Barbieland”, which is a refreshing explosion of color that brings decades of Barbie funhouses, clothes, and vehicles to life. Margot Robbie is unsurprisingly perfect for the lead role, but even she is often upstaged by Ryan Gosling who might be even more perfectly cast as OG Ken.

There are a lot of genuinely funny moments and thoroughly entertaining scenes in the movie (most of which involve the Kens, since all the Barbies tend to do is either tell each other how pretty they are or talk about The Patriarchy™), but those moments — rather frustratingly — only account for half the film at most.

The other half is is bogged down by a string of extremely stupid, 2013-era SJW / “woke” / whatever-you-want-to-call-it talking points that could easily have been ripped straight from an indoctrinated teenager’s Tumblr page. Instead of presenting characters in situations that lead to organic and believable opportunities to incorporate political themes, Barbie just has its characters deliver obnoxious and in some cases hilariously hyperbolic diatribes presenting the “Real World” as a place where women are severely oppressed everywhere they go.

Bad, preachy writing aside, the massive problem with all of this is that — assuming Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s goal was to create a story promoting modern feminist ideology — it simply doesn’t work.

Let me explain:

Barbieland vs. The “Real World”

The whole conceit of the film is that all the Barbies and Kens (and Alan) all live in “Barbieland”, an alternate reality that is somehow physically connected to the “Real World”.

Barbieland is a place exclusively for Barbies, where the women occupy all positions of authority. We meet President Barbie, Astronaut Barbie, Postal Worker Barbie, CEO Barbie, and so on. Only Barbies have any say in what happens in Barbieland, and they perform all of the key roles in society with the Kens being left with no meaning or purpose outside of their relationship with the Barbies.

When we’re first introduced to OG Ken (Ryan Gosling), he lets us know that it’s only a good day for him if Barbie notices him. HIs “job” is defined as “Beach” — not lifeguard, or beach police, or Coast Guard, or even professional surfer. Just… Beach. He has no skills, barely any intelligence, and Barbie doesn’t really even like him that much.

Early in the film, he pitches the idea of staying overnight with Barbie to do “boyfriend girlfriend” stuff, but she tells him she’s going to have a huge dance party with the other Barbies, because every night is Girls Night in Barbieland.

Now… What you need to understand is that there’s a very explicit satirical point being made here. Barbieland represents a matriarchal fantasy world that is supposed to be the perfect, utopian opposite to the “Patriarchy” that represses women in the Real World. The Barbies have it all — great careers, tons of friends, political power, and men with no utility other than to look good and lavish the Barbies with attention. They dance all night and then wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to have the perfect day all over again, while the Kens are left unfulfilled, fighting each other over rare droplets of Barbie’s affection.

Barbieland continues in this repetitive stasis until one day “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie) wakes up with thoughts of death and existential despair.

This inciting incident results in Barbie traveling to the Real World in order to (paradoxically) find the girl playing with her and help that girl feel better so that Barbieland can be repaired and the rift of sadness doesn’t grow.

Once in the Real World, Barbie’s worldview is shattered when she learns that playing with empowering Barbie Dolls did not just inspire every young girl to grow up and create gender equality between men and women. Unlike her experiences in Barbieland, Barbie learns that the Real World is an evil Patriarchy where she immediately gets catcalled, sexually assaulted by a stranger slapping her ass, and discovers that there are literally zero women in any position of authority. Even the Mattel Corporation itself — owner and manufacturer of Barbie dolls in the film and real life — is presented as being run exclusively by men, with Will Ferrell as Mattel’s doofus CEO, crassly profiting off of an only surface-level commitment to female empowerment.

Meanwhile, for the first time in his entire life, Ken experiences positive attention.

People look at him rollerblading in tacky workout spandex from 1992, and give him some high fives. He sees men all around him benefiting from friendships, supporting each other, and having fun in ways he’s only ever dreamed about. Eventually, he hears about Patriarchy and thinks it sounds incredible.

But here’s the problem:

In order for the feminist satire to work, the Real World has to be the opposite of Barbieland in every meaningful way, but… It’s not, and anyone who isn’t a teenager brainwashed by nonsense on TikTok knows it’s not.

And yet, because Barbie depicts the Real World in such an absurdly ludicrous and unbelievable way, its ham-fisted political message actually doesn’t work or make any sense at all.

Consider:

The moment Barbie arrives in the Real World, she’s ogled by the men of Venice Beach. She feels threatened by this, and says that she senses and undercurrent of “violence” to the male gaze. And of course, a few minutes later she gets slapped on the ass and when that happens, she turns around and punches the guy in the face — an act for which she gets arrested.

In Los Angels, California.

A couple questions: 1) In what universe did any of the people involved in the film think that was a normal occurrence and, worse; 2) Why does the film want me to believe that Barbie would be the one going to jail if she punched the guy in the face as a reaction, instead of the man who sexually assaulted her?

Also early in the film, Barbie is surprised to discover that there aren’t female construction workers in the Real World because only women are allowed to work productive jobs in Barbieland. This reversal of roles is jarring, but the obvious difference is that women aren’t actually barred from being construction workers the way the Kens were in her world.

Women in the Real World are more than welcome to seek out and do those kinds of jobs, and some do (ie. there are female construction workers!) but even in the societies with the highest levels of legal and cultural gender equality, most women emphatically choose not to take those kinds of jobs.

So the film makes it seem like men are keeping women out of the most back-breaking professions, but the opposite is true. Women are welcome to do those jobs, but largely opt to let men do the most physically-demanding work instead.

That’s… a win… for the Patriarchy?

I’m confused.

And speaking of the Patriarchy, Barbie even presents Mattel’s Board of Directors as exclusively men and mocks the idea that the company has ever had female leadership… but the company was literally co-founded by a woman — Ruth Handler (whose ghost is played by Rhea Perlman in the film) — in 1945 and their current Board of Directors is half women.

Ruth’s original goal was to give young girls an adult fashion doll so they had toys that helped them model options beyond just pretending to be mothers. That was almost 80 years ago. We don’t live in the world Ruth Handler grew up in. Every girl in the US for the last several decades has grown up in an environment where their teachers, influencers in media and now social-media, and virtually every piece of children’s entertainment in existence tells them they can do anything.

Barbie has long been a part of that cultural shift, and yet this movie imagines a modern world in which women have no power or agency whatsoever (clearly less than Ruth Handler had in the 1940s), and the annoying tween Barbie thinks is her owner (Ariana Greenblatt, who was great in Love & Monsters, which is a much better film overall) even calls her — the titular hero and protagonist of the film — a “fascist” and accuses her of perpetuating the Patriarchy.

Yes, film about Barbie… The hero, who is lovely and has zero animosity towards anyone, is the bad guy here.

The problem with all this is that in order to make the Real World as awful as it needs to be to justify the film’s political perspective, Greta Gerwig has to lie.

But that’s her only option, because anything else would make it more obvious that…

Barbieland is Better Under “Patriarchy”

Barbieland, as it is at the beginning of the film, is genuinely repressive to both men and women alike.

It’s a world where the Barbies have pre-defined, immutable roles in society they can neither choose, control, nor escape (Doctor Barbie, President Barbie, Mail-carrier Barbie, etc.); and the Kens are quite literally second-class citizens with zero actual purpose in a way that has never described the role of women in any society in history.

So when OG Ken comes back from the Real World and brings “Patriarchy” with him, the Kens rise up and create a new world that allows the Kens to have some agency and meaning in their lives (which they use to convert Barbie Dreamhouses into more awesome Mojo Dojo Casa Houses). The Kens taking on more active roles in Barbieland actually frees the other Barbies in a way that many describe as liberating. They get to take breaks from their "super important” work running the world and let the Kens shoulder some of that burden. They drink beer and go on dates, and although life in Barbieland is a bit messier than before, it’s far more dynamic and interesting.

When “Stereotypical Barbie” returns to Barbieland with her humans (and the entire Mattel board hot on their trail), she decides that the only way the other Barbies could be happy with the new world order created by the Kens is if they’ve been brainwashed. Setting aside what it says that a whole society of strong, independent, career women can be “brainwashed” into serving men after like 2 days of the men creating a more fun society for everyone, it doesn’t seem to occur to the film that life might just be better in a world where everyone has some level of agency and where men and women actually spend their time having fun together instead of being antagonists.

So our hero Barbie and some of the other outcasts hatch a plan to get their world back before the Kens (permanently?) change the Barbieland Constitution to……. To….

Wait… I actually have no idea what the Kens’ new Constitution was going to be. Presumably, it would give them the right to hold jobs and have a say in Barbieland policy.

But this is a bad thing and must be stopped, because the movie needs men to be the enemy, even if what they’re asking for — basic individual rights, the chance to own dreamhouses of their own, and to be treated with slightly more dignity and respect than they currently have from the Barbies — isn’t unreasonable or unhealthy.

And the way that the remaining Barbies stop the Kens’ takeover of Barbieland is by using their feminine wiles to trick them into believing that their partner Barbies are cheating on them. Barbies literally use flirting with other men as a way to induce jealousy among the Kens and turn them against each other long enough to prevent them from exercising their right to vote in a Constitutional election.

Seriously… The resolution of the Kens “Patriarchal” takeover is for the Barbies to recommit themselves to disenfranchising the men of their world such that they’re not able to participate in the political process that defines the laws they’re forced to abide by (and which seem to be deeply misandrist).

Finally, CEO Will Ferrell and the rest of the Mattel Board show up and all the loose ends are wrapped up one way or another… but all any of that did for me is reinforce how utterly cartoonish the depiction of the Real World and real human beings actually is in the film.

Is Barbie Accidentally Anti-Woke?

I’ve had a couple days to think about this now and the only analysis I’ve seen of the Barbie movie that makes any sense at all is Shoe0nHead’s take: It may indeed be an unintentionally Anti-Woke Masterpiece.

The only thing that truly make sense here is that the film actually a satire mocking wokeness itself.

There’s just no plausible interpretation of the film that would lead me to believe that it is an effective means of indoctrinating people with its surface level stupidity. To the contrary, this is a movie we should be showing to woke people along with a curriculum designed to point out all of its incredible absurdities.

And in my view, speaking more as a filmmaker and reviewer here, I think its flaws all revolve around the fact that the “Real World” is every bit as unbelievable and cartoonish as Barbieland. If the Real World actually felt real — that is, if it had the kind of verisimilitude that is essential for an audience to become immersed in the story — then its contrast to Barbieland would have helped make the satirical aspects work.

But because the Real World isn’t anything remotely like the world that gets depicted in Barbie, the surface-level political arguments simply don’t add up.

Instead, what we have here is a much better case for the film being a pretty effective criticism of woke, intersectional feminist ideology.

Final Thoughts

Amusingly, there is a film from 20 years ago that’s an excellent parallel to Barbie that features a similar overarching plot and understood how to create a fantasy world that stands in genuine contrast to the real world — and it even stars Will Ferrell!

That film is Jon Favreau’s holiday classic, Elf.

Like Barbie, Elf features a bright and colorfully magical world that is in a parallel reality, but is still physically accessible to the real world. Like the character Barbie, Buddy the Elf (Will Ferrell) has an existential crisis that requires him to travel to the real world in order to find the solution. And like Barbie, Elf’s main entertainment value is the “fish-out-of-water” aspect of putting a happy, bubbly, naïve character in the real world and watching them navigate harsh realities their fantasy world never prepared them for.

The difference is that when Buddy the Elf meets his father — a businessman running a children’s book publishing company, played by James Caan — Buddy is the nonsensical doofus who lives off of candy, syrup, and full-sugar soda and everyone else acts like a normal human being; whereas in the case of Barbie… No one acts like a normal human being!

One lesson here might be: Do not cast Will Ferrell in a role that desperately needs a serious actor. He only ever plays himself. Even as the CEO of Mattel, he’s goofy and dumb like Buddy the Elf, when the film actually needed him to act like James Caan’s character instead.

But in the end, I don’t think it would have mattered, because the only way that the intentional satire in Barbie could have been effective is if the real world really was as comically misogynist and awful as the film tries (unsuccessfully, in my view) to make it seem. And that’s pretty much my takeaway.

Barbie has some really great moments, but its creators’ attempt to shoehorn their own misguided politics into the film renders makes it vastly worse than it should have been.

Sean MaloneComment