Well, I’m feeling generous after the box office just had its fourth-biggest weekend EVER thanks to the Barbenheimer phenomenon … so I’m making this weekend post free for ALL rather than just for paid subscribers.
I’ve now had the immense pleasure of viewing Barbenheimer twice and in each direction. The first time around, I saw Barbie first, then Oppenheimer the next day. On opening night, I started with Oppenheimer and then went straight into Barbie within 30 minutes.
I think everyone’s mileage may vary, and your viewing circumstances may change the order or preference depending on how long you have spaced out the two viewings. But if you’re still deciding now…
I think you should watch Barbie first, then Oppenheimer.
I think Nolan’s film benefits the most from having time afterward to sort through various elements ranging from the structure to the themes. I also think it’s worthwhile to sit with its weightiness and not try to push it aside immediately — those feelings of discomfort become crucial to unlocking how Oppenheimer’s doomsaying prophecies have and haven’t come to pass in our world.
None of this is to discount the significant intellectual and emotional achievements within Greta Gerwig’s film. In fact, what I found so thrilling about the Barbenheimer experience in both permutations is the ways in which these films enter into surprising conversation with one another. This is not just gender-based counterprogramming like 2008’s The Dark Knight/Mamma Mia! pile-up. Barbie and Oppenheimer have far more in common than you might think. There’s a great fusion from letting them collide, to borrow a thematic signpost from the latter film.
There are a startling number of lines that could make sense in either movie, from the obvious “Do you guys ever think about dying?” (Barbie) to “Theory will only take you so far” (Oppenheimer). Both films feature protagonists trying to square the difference between their observable realities and a paradigm-shifting world that only they can perceive. For Barbie, that’s the “Real World;” for Oppenheimer, the quantum world.
Each film’s conflict comes from the character’s inability to compartmentalize these realms. They acknowledge the grandness of what they come to represent to others around them and flail when confronted with the idea that they might one day lose control of their ideas. Each figure straddles two eras of thought — Barbie at the fulcrum of feminism’s first and second waves, Oppenheimer as the embodiment of modernism’s ideals and precipitator of post-modernism itself with his invention — and acutely feels the fear of getting left behind by people who can only see the negative consequences of their innovations.
To resolve the tension within themselves, they must venture out into the West — that great American frontier of manifest destiny and self-actualization — and confront the nagging possibility that has seeped into their very physical experience of life. Their hero’s journeys bring them into dialogue with fundamental questions about creations that become something more significant than mere objects, raising the complexities of concepts like gender dynamics (Barbie) and military force (Oppenheimer) as they go. They each face a sneaky rival — Ryan Gosling’s Ken in Barbie, Robert Downey, Jr.’s Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer — who can cynically exploit that disillusionment out of their own jealousy and latent need for adulation.
And by their respective conclusions, each hero must come to grips with the messiness of humanity and how they square themselves as individuals within it. Both films resound because the protagonists contain such personal refractions of their creators’ preferred avatars: Gerwig’s confused women trying to make sense of femininity’s contradictions, Nolan’s tortured creators terrified of losing control over their dominion. With varying degrees of solemnity and silliness, both Barbie and Oppenheimer come to grips with the fact that the world of people is one of irreconcilable, unpredictable complexity. Rather than conquer or solve it, they must live in it — as well as with the consequences of their contributions to it.
I’m far from the only person who’s contributed great writing to these two movies — it’s a rarity for such grand, big-budget films produced by the studio system to be worthy of this much conversation and discussion. Let this serve as your starting point and jump into some of the best things I’ve been consuming about Barbenheimer.
BARBIE
REVIEWS
“‘Barbie’ Review: Greta Gerwig Goes Way Outside the Box with Her Funny, Feminist Fantasia,” Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“In the beginning, there was Barbie,” Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
“Barbie Is the Platonic Ideal of the IP Movie,” Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse
““Barbie” Is Brilliant, Beautiful, and Fun as Hell,” Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Don’t even try to put this ‘Barbie’ in a box,” Odie Henderson, Boston Globe
“Barbie review — a gorgeously weird blockbuster event,” Hannah Strong, Little White Lies
“Barbie Is a Delight of Improbable Proportions,” Dana Stevens, Slate
“We Shouldn’t Have to Grade Barbie on a Curve,” Alison Willmore, Vulture
“'Barbie' Shows The Limitations Of Feminism — And The Brand-Inspired Movie,” Candice Frederick, Huffington Post
“Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep,” Stephanie Zacharek, Time
“It’s a Barbie World,” Siddhant Adlakha, Joysauce
FEATURES
“Ruth Handler: Sex Toys, Financial Crimes and the Origin of Barbie,” Vanity Fair
“The Often Wacky, Sometimes Wicked, and Always Wondrous Eras of Barbie,” The Ringer
“The Only Guide To Barbie Lore You Will Ever Need,” /Film
“Barbie’s Ending Is When It Finally Transcends Corporate IP,” Vulture
“How Greta Gerwig landed on that memorable '90s song for the Kens in Barbie,” Entertainment Weekly
“How ‘Barbie’ Skewered the Sensitive-Bro Silliness of Matchbox Twenty’s ‘Push,’” Cracked
“Ryan Gosling’s Ken Is the Culmination of a Careerlong Obsession,” Slant
“Let Us Salute the Unsung Hero of Barbie,” Vulture
INTERVIEWS
“Greta Gerwig Tells Us Some Ideas Were ‘Too Strange’ Even for Her Weird, Wild, and Wonderful ‘Barbie’,” IndieWire
“How Greta Gerwig Brought Indie Spirit to Barbie,” W
“Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on Barbie and Kenergy,” New York Times (gift article)
“The Woman Who Rescued Barbie from Development Hell,” Vulture
OPPENHEIMER
REVIEWS
MY REVIEW: ‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan Majestically Turns the Manhattan Project into American Myth
“Oppenheimer is an audacious inquiry into power, in all its forms,” Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
“Oppenheimer Is More Than a Creation Myth About the Atomic Bomb,” David Sims, The Atlantic
“In 'Oppenheimer', Christopher Nolan Confronts His Coldness,” Matt Goldberg,
“Oppenheimer Review,” Siddhant Adlakha, IGN
“Oppenheimer Is a Tragedy of Operatic Grandeur,” Alison Willmore, Vulture
“Oppenheimer review — Cillian Murphy’s finest hour,” David Jenkins, Little White Lies
“The Sheer Scale of ‘Oppenheimer’,” Adam Nayman, The Ringer
“‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Historical Epic Is as Brilliant and Short-Sighted as Its Subject,” David Ehrlich, IndieWire
FEATURES
“Who’s Who in Oppenheimer: A Guide to 36 Scientists, Soldiers, and Reds,” Vulture
“Jean Tatlock: The Tragic Story of Robert Oppenheimer’s ‘Truest Love’,” Vanity Fair
“Einstein and Oppenheimer’s Real Relationship Was Cordial and Complicated,” Vanity Fair
“How Christopher Nolan Crafted the World of Oppenheimer,” Vulture
“Oppenheimer Is The Most Christopher Nolan Movie Christopher Nolan Has Ever Made,” /Film
“Oppenheimer’s Brainiac Paradise Explained: What Is the Institute for Advanced Study?,” The Messenger
“What Is ‘Oppenheimer’ Telling Us About Nuclear War?,” IndieWire
“The ‘Troubling Reverberations’ at the End of Oppenheimer, Explained,” Vulture
“The Melancholy Final Days Of Oppenheimer (Or, What Happened After The Credits Rolled),” /Film
INTERVIEWS
“How Christopher Nolan Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI,” Wired
“Christopher Nolan and the Contradictions of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” The New York Times (gift article)
“Oppenheimer Cinematographer On Filming Quantum Physics And Blowing Up A Bomb,” /Film
“The quiet passion of Cillian Murphy,” Rolling Stone UK
BARBENHEIMER
“How ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Barbie’ Bring Monumental Figures to Life,” Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
“Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros., and the Struggle for the Soul of Movies,” The Ringer
“‘Barbenheimer’ Is a Huge Hollywood Moment and Maybe the Last for a While,” The New York Times (gift article)
Back next week with a little something else Barbie-inspired, in case you aren’t sick of it yet.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall