By Pen Fang
Contains spoilers for both Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Perhaps the movie event of the year, “Barbenheimer” swept through social media like a storm, with memes, fan-made posters, discussions about viewing order and the seeming dichotomy of the two films, and even shirt designs circulating everywhere. The opening weekend for the two films garnered the fourth largest domestic weekend and highest box office since pre-pandemic in 2019.
Barbenheimer was a successful instance of what is known as “counterprogramming” in film — a marketing strategy of releasing a film with contrasting themes on the same day as a major picture to attract an audience that may have originally not wanted to see it. Prior to release, the films garnered attention for the seemingly endless list of cast announcements on social media and the same release date. Rather than the two films creating a rivalry, there was a synergistic effect instead. It was not Barbie or Oppenheimer, but rather Barbie and Oppenheimer (and what order to see them in. Hint: Barbie first.) In fact, I saw both of these movies opening weekend, back to back (Barbie first and Oppenheimer second) with full theaters
Both films were majorly successful: Barbie became Warner Bros’ highest grossing film, the highest grossing film of 2023 (so far), and the highest grossing film directed by a woman, while Oppenheimer sits at 3rd on the highest grossing films of 2023 and 2nd on the highest grossing R-rated films of all time.
Barbie is so refreshingly fun. Everything is over-the-top in a way that works so well — from the sets of the movie (Barbieland reportedly caused a shortage of a certain type of pink paint) to the soundtrack and choreography and even the crazy promotions and press tours. My theater was filled with no small amount of pink outfits.
Barbie begins dazzlingly dreamlike, following her morning routine in the mechanics of children’s playtime (the imaginary shower water and food, simply floating to and from different stories of Barbie’s dreamhouse) with the soundtrack reinforcing the seeming bubble of a utopia. It’s silly and glittery, complete with dance sequences and schoolboy crush energy (Kenergy?) until the cracks start to show in the facade, starting with Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie. One of the things I loved about this was the simplicity yet effectiveness of the execution: Stereotypical Barbie’s morning routine post-thoughts-of-death moment is structured the same, except completely wrong (“P: PANIC!”) while still maintaining the fun humorous tone.
Barbieland is a matriarchal utopia, with women holding every position of power, and the Kens as more of an accessory to the grandeur of the Barbies’ accomplishments. (After all — they are just Kens.) But, like Stereotypical Barbie herself, the glittery surface begins to wear thin.
Stereotypical Barbie tries to search for a solution to her ailments (such as flat feet, cellulite), visiting the shunned and exiled Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), whose doodled-on, constantly doing the splits appearance indicates she has been played with too much by her owner in the real world. Weird Barbie reveals that Stereotypical Barbie’s crisis is coming from similar feelings in the real world, and she must go find the girl playing with her to fix it. When she finally gets to the real world (accompanied by a stowaway Ken), she is thrust into a reality harshly juxtaposing the bubble of Barbieland.
Barbie and Ken both go on their own journeys of self-discovery. Barbie finds her person, not the young Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) as she believed, but her mother, Mattel employee Gloria (America Ferrera), and they have to focus on saving Barbieland from the patriarchal Kendom Ken has imposed once leaving Barbie behind in the real world.
Like everything else about the movie, the messages Barbie tries to convey are also many. At its core, the film is about being human. On one front, Barbie grapples with the dichotomy of being a woman. One of the most cathartic moments of the film is a monologue delivered by Gloria as she tries to piece together the impossible expectations that come with being a woman. And while the writing feels slightly cliché at times, the sentiment (and America Ferrera’s delivery) is still powerful. Barbie also grapples with existentialism, as Stereotypical Barbie tries to reconcile her entire being as someone else’s idea with her own self. There’s a touching moment toward the end of the film where she meets Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, who tells her that her story surpasses her origins as the doll and all its accumulated baggage, and that she
Gerwig uses the Kens — in part — as a subverted representation of patriarchy, where their roles are relegated to seeking Barbies’ attention and having no real presence or power. Under the goofiness of Ken’s lines about horses and patriarchy, she shows how patriarchal expectations harm everyone. Like Barbie, Ken’s self-discovery also focuses on him finding his own identity without looking through the lens of others’ expectations. In the end, Stereotypical Barbie apologizes to Ken for disregarding his existence and treating him like a second-class human being, encouraging him to be Ken — and define his existence without Barbie.
It would be unfair to not mention the marketing, and the heavy role Mattel plays in the film. Gerwig herself seems aware of this, with a line that seems to recognize she can imbue the relatability and powerful messaging, so long as it makes money. But as Aisha Harris of NPR puts it, “sometimes corporate propaganda can be fun as hell.”
And it is: you’d be hard-pressed to find something more fun than the dramatic dance-off delivered to perfection by Ryan Gosling, as he laments “I’m just Ken,” or the beach scenes complete with Mermaid Barbie’s plastic-looking hair or the tidbits of pop culture references sprinkled throughout including Depression Barbie rewatching BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice and the Barbies distracting Kens by asking them to explain The Godfather.
Ultimately, Barbie is a sparklingly sweet tribute to girlhood and also just being human. Gerwig captures the fun, childhood innocence of being a young girl, and reconciles it with the adulthood it becomes, emphasizing the human self and presence over ideas by closing the film with Barbie’s choice to become human — and become more than an idea.
Oppenheimer is inspired by the biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The film begins with something of a warning: “PROMETHEUS STOLE FIRE FROM THE GODS AND GAVE IT TO MAN. FOR THIS, HE WAS CHAINED TO A ROCK AND TORTURED FOR ETERNITY.” There begins an underlying unease that recurs throughout the film; Oppenheimer thrives in uncertainties and discomfort.
It builds on two fronts: “Fission” tells of Oppenheimer’s university days through the Trinity test and the fallout of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the security investigation and his fall from grace in vivid hues, while “Fusion” follows the Senate confirmation of Lewis Strauss, who helped tear away Oppenheimer’s security clearance and political power, in a harsher black-and-white.
The slow build at first weaves together the framework of Oppenheimer’s personality that will later lead to his unraveling. While in university in Germany, he’s somewhat the troubled genius trope: he has an air of cockiness, “emotionally immature,” and “troubled by visions of a hidden universe.” He attempts to poison his teacher (which may have actually happened in real life), and eventually returns to America, where he begins expanding quantum physics research.
From there, things pick up a bit, as Oppenheimer begins his communist party associations that will haunt him like stubborn ghosts throughout the film and is recruited for the race for humanity: building the atomic bomb before the Nazis do. Nolan’s filmmaking absolutely shines in the Los Alamos arc, tense and fast-paced through scenes that are mostly dialogue.
Once the bomb is dropped, however, Oppenheimer is forced to confront the consequences of his actions. The last arc, consisting mainly of the security investigation and Lewis Strauss’ Senate confirmation hearing, digs heavily into the dirty politics of gaining power. In fact, the first time I watched Oppenheimer, it was the last act that brought me to a mess of tears. Something about watching Oppenheimer’s life being picked apart, piece by piece, especially in the last act built up into a rush of sorrow that released when the credits started rolling.
The bomb drop sequence itself is masterfully done. Even though the outcome is known and inevitable, Nolan manages to build suspense and unease, forcing the viewers into the same headspace as the Los Alamos crew: knowing that the test cannot fail, but also knowing what success truly means — and what it will bring. Once the bomb itself actually drops, Nolan’s utilization of silence allows for that dread to release. I remember the dead silence in the theater, and feeling the pressure against the dam in my chest burst: what have we done?
(Despite everything, despite every misgiving, despite the nonzero chance of the end of the world, they did it. A feat of scientific achievement, and a horrible realization of power.)
Perhaps an even better sequence occurs a short time after the bomb drop, when Oppenheimer is delivering a celebration speech to the Los Alamos crowd. The motif of roaring footsteps as applause begins again, deafening in splendor, accompanied suddenly by a blazing glory of light paralleling the Trinity test’s. And when Oppenheimer blinks the haze of triumph away, his imagination confronts him with the devastation of what he has created as the crowd steams and he steps through a burned body, crumbled to ash.
Oppenheimer plays a little like a tragedy. At the culmination of his achievements, the unraveling of his life begins. The last act, ruthless in its entrapment of Oppenheimer, questions the foundation of the man himself. “Who’d want to justify their whole life?” is asked in the earlier scenes of the film. And that is, in part, what the film, and especially the last act, asks: is he justifiable? The absence of a direct depiction of the victims of the bombings speaks to Oppenheimer’s attempt to detach himself from the consequences of his actions. He’s mixed in his support of the bomb, dismissing a petition against the use of it and embracing his title as its maker, but turns staunchly against it — too little, too late?
Overall, there is a continual sense of dread built up about the use of the atomic bomb. The film shows again and again the scientists questioning whether or not to use the bomb, practically begging the question: how many times did they have the opportunity to stop — and shouldn’t they have stopped? With each discussion of nuclear weaponry, from its conception to the transition into the arms race, the film practically begs the question: why can’t they stop? Why can’t we stop? How do we justify it?
Oppenheimer is flawed, yes, but in the end, he was aware of — and against — the power of massacre stored in the atomic bomb. And that was his undoing against a group of people hellbent on their own successes, willing to destroy humanity in the process.
It’s hard not to fall in love with Ludwig Göransson’s score, featuring a heavy use of the violin, matching Oppenheimer’s personality and Murphy’s performance. “With a solo violin, you can play the most beautiful, romantic vibrato,” he explained. “But then if you press down the bow heavily and change the speed, you can make something horrific, manic or neurotic in a split second… [Nolan] and I were constantly talking about going in and out of different emotions.”
Hoyte van Hoytema’s vivid cinematography adds just as much. Like the questions raised by the film, the imagery haunts too: Emily Blunt turning around amidst sheets hanging on a line, Nolan’s depiction of the quantum world and nuclear explosions, a nuclear arsenal ready to be deployed, water rippling across a map of potential nuclear targets.
The cast of the film is phenomenal. Cillian Murphy — and what he is able to convey through just his eyes — absolutely shines as Oppenheimer. Emily Blunt brings a certain fire to the film as Kitty Oppenheimer, shredding the delivery of her lines in the last act of the film especially. Matt Damon is a darling as General Groves, pragmatic and humorous at times. Robert Downey Jr. is simply brilliant as Lewis Strauss, shrewd and manipulative in all the right ways. Other great performances come from Benny Safdie’s Edward Teller, Rami Malek’s David Hill, and of course, Florence Pugh’s Jean Tatlock, who I wish we saw more of.
It’s also worth mentioning the number of physicists throughout the film, including the likes of Richard Feynman (and his bongos), Werner Heisenberg, and Enrico Fermi, whose appearances felt like little easter eggs.
Nolan’s storytelling is brilliant. The semi-linear story weaves together, scenes referencing and paralleling each other, contextualizing past situations and laying the foundations for the future. The ending truly ties everything together, continuing a scene from the beginning: Einstein and Oppenheimer having a conversation as Oppenheimer is offered a position on the Atomic Energy Commission by Strauss, a scene that becomes the shatterpoint for a spider web of connections in the glass of the plot.
Einstein asks Oppenheimer what became of the possibility that the atomic bomb would start a chain reaction that would destroy the world. Oppenheimer replies with, “I believe we did.”
It’s hard to reconcile with the horrors of man, and perhaps that is the fallout of the film that lingers most. Oppenheimer saw this firsthand: he may have won the race to build the bomb, but perhaps he also led the race to destroy humanity.
