Barbie
When the child was a child, she would push her little sister down the hallways of her then-unbroken family home in a hot pink Barbie sports car. That a proportionately correct kid’s toy was so well-made as to function as a vehicle for a plastic doll and also hold the weight of a human toddler is something that mystifies me to this day. Then again, it was the 90s - an era when a single income could finance a 4 x 1 in Mount Pleasant and Mattel made decent quality accessories for their flagship girl’s toy. It was the best of times, it was the Barbie-est of times, and ours was the last childhood to be looked back on with affection.
There’s a similar theme of rose-coloured retrospection (and the lifting of the veil) in Greta Gerwig’s hotly anticipated Barbie, a film that represents a significant accomplishment in femme-filmmaking and offers its audience a near 2-hour escape of plastic fantastic fun and amusement. But what I was somehow surprised (and slightly disappointed) to find is that when you pull the head off Barbie and take a look inside, there’s really nothing there but air.
2001: A Barbodyssey [image credit Warner Media]
Barbie sets off on a strong, pointed foot with a Kubrick homage narrated by Dame Helen Mirren in which little girls are struck by the emergence of a hot lady (Margot Robbie’s ‘Stereotypical’ Barbie) and realise they have an alternative to becoming mothers and homemakers. Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” swells as the girls gloriously smash their baby dolls in emancipatory celebration, and Barbie’s work is done. Having fixed all the issues in women’s lives, Barbie retires to Barbie Land, where she lives contentedly with all the other Barbies in their dream homes, carrying out their dream occupations. Occasionally, they’ll have a dance party with the Kens who also occupy Barbie Land, but no one knows where they live or what they do for the remainder of their days. Life is pretty in pink for the Barbies until one day, Robbie’s Barbie wakes up with bad breath, flat feet, spreading cellulite and thoughts of death.
It turns out that Barbie’s imprint on young women wasn’t as life altering as she thought and out in the real world, someone who’s not having such a good time being a woman is letting her negativity spread to her own doll. With some help from the outcast Weird Barbie (a perfectly cast Kate McKinnon), Barbie learns that she must venture out past the safety of Barbie Land and fix what’s wrong with her owner so that things can go back to being perfect. In an act expected of all loyal counterparts, her infatuated Ken (Ryan Gosling) tags along and gets a taste of real world patriarchy that’s sweeter than any invisible Barbie Land food he’s ever consumed.
What Barbie does well is speak to a very specific cohort in language that appeals to them while minimising the looming presence of the brand behind it. It’s vibrant, easy on the eye, firing on all comedic cylinders and takes a genuinely interesting angle in telling its story. That Barbie is acknowledged as a contradictory figure in our history is important, but the decision to invert the roles and secretly make Gosling’s Ken the heroine is quite brilliant. Gerwig and Gosling strike gold with Ken’s characterisation; he represents the actual downtrodden, powerless being in the reality we’re shown and watching him grapple with the pros (horses) and cons (everything else) of the patriarchy is the most valuable insight the film has to offer.
Tarantino’s favourite shot [image courtesy Warner Media]
Barbie is also relatively unafraid to poke the bear (Mattel) in ways that occasionally elevate it from comedy to satire. Will Ferrell’s Mattel CEO, along with his entirely male management team, are presented as bumbling idiots, and it’s a pleasant dip into the farcical that should appeal to anyone who’s worked in the corporate world. The soundtrack is curated for the film’s target audience and serves as a suitably bubbly, cool accompaniment, and the chemistry of the entire cast is testament to Greta Gerwig’s appeal as a powerhouse director that everyone wants to work with.
Where the film struggles to be more than the sum of its parts is in casting its net too wide. Is there a place for Stereotypical Barbie in the modern world? Will Ken get some agency and resolve his existentialism? Will men and women ever truly be equal? Barbie asks these (and too many other) questions at such a volume that it can’t succeed in touching on the answers in any deep way, and it left me feeling a little emotionally shortchanged at its close. I feel silly expecting anything more from a movie about dolls made in collaboration with the conglomerate who creates them, but then I remember where these expectations came from: the exhaustive media promotion for the film.
In a Letterboxd interview released shortly before the film came out, director Greta Gerwig name dropped some 29 films that served as influences for Barbie. Among the titles were the “authentically artificial” The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ In The Rain, whose aesthetics can most definitely be felt in Sarah Greenwood’s production design, Jacqueline Durran’s costumes and Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography. But the cited influence I was most excited to see was Wim Wenders’ 1987 romantic fantasy Wings Of Desire, a film that exists on the parapets of Berlin as two angels overlook the human life below and one begins to deeply yearn for it. Having now seen Barbie, I’m of the opinion that the only comparisons to be made are to The Lego Movie, and perhaps Pinocchio and Toy Story 2. Gerwig speaks of wanting to imbue the film with heart but for me, that’s as glaringly omitted here as it is in the actual doll.
Horse Boy Ken [image courtesy Warner Media]
The film is also confused in its messaging and doesn’t seem sure of its aspirations; is Barbie destroyer of the patriarchy, is she inadvertently reinforcing those norms on Barbie Land’s victims (i.e. the Kens who reside there but never really find their place, even after the resolution) or is she something in between? There’s a self consciousness to the script, like the makers are worried about saying the wrong thing in the current climate, so instead they say everything to cover all bases and end up interfering with the audience’s immersion in the world they’ve created. These are small gripes but for a film with such acclaimed writers at the helm (the script was co-written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach), I expect a little more control. Ultimately, my main problem with Barbie is that it can’t seem to escape the grip (however impotent) of Mattel and becoming something more than an inevitable brand advertisement, and if even the combined creative and productive forces of Gerwig, Baumbach and Robbie can’t wrestle their way out, I doubt it would’ve been possible for anyone else.
I remember selling my Barbies at the age of 7 once I’d decided I’d outgrown them. They were purchased by a girl significantly older than I was and a wave of smugness had rushed over me before uncertainty settled in. Had I made the wrong decision and prematurely said goodbye to my femme idols without a worthwhile replacement? I feel quite resolutely after seeing Barbie that the answer was ‘no’. Barbie fulfilled her original purpose back in the late 1950s in freeing a generation of girls from the confines of forced motherhood, but as a child born in the 90s, I was never that keen on baby dolls in the first place and could’ve done without the strict beauty standards.
You can’t sit with us! [image courtesy Warner Media]
There’s a chance that I might pick up more of what this film tries to put down upon second viewing, and I’d like to give it that chance. My opinion of Gerwig remains unwavering; she is a remarkable talent and her versatility in taking on projects is exciting. Ultimately, it’s a good thing that an indie film director can succeed commercially on this level and draw in such a massive audience; perhaps they’ll start considering colours other than pink in their next trip to the cinema. For now, I equate Barbie to the bag of Strawberry Clouds I took in with me and let melt down into sugar at the back of my mouth - a highly enjoyable, nostalgic treat that left me with a desire for more nutrition.
Verdict:
Laura ☆☆☆
Alex ☆☆☆
Barbie is in cinemas now.
