Barbie Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
WOMEN TELLING WOMEN’S STORIES!!
It’s Barbie TIME.
Intellectual Property movies have been on the rise in Hollywood, most of which have little cinematic value to offer and are clearly cash grabs. Sonic, Mario, Uncharted. So when it was announced Greta Gerwig is directing a Barbie movie, co-written with partner Noah Baumbach, THEN that first 2001 A Space Odyssey teaser was released, everyone’s curiosities rightfully peaked. You know this isn’t a “sellout” filmmaker, but Barbie’s parent company Mattel is a producer on this film, toh it won’t really be a crushing indictment of corporate greed, inducting mere children into the evil clutches of insatiable consumerism.
And hence, to keep this mystery getting thicker, I’ve stayed diligently away from promotions, further trailers, early reactions everything. A decision that’s paid off very, very well.
See, I wasn’t prepared for Barbie, to be transported to Barbie Land, a Themyscira of sorts, where all important administerial positions are held by women, all women are Barbies, and all Barbies have fulfilling lives with careers and ambitions. Now all these Barbies also seem exclusively American, so it checks out that they are blissfully unaware there is a world outside Barbie Land, the real world, where patriarchy still runs the world, governing everyone and everything.
Margot Robbie is Stereotypical Barbie who is perfectly happy in her mansion, throwing dance parties and going to the beach with her girlfriends, until one day suddenly one day, unprompted, she begins to think of human thoughts like death and is kind of depressed the next day. Then finds out that to solve the mystery of her abruptly altered demeanor, she will have to travel to the real world. Ryan Gosling as Ken, goes along.
You know a lot has been said about how so MANY actors pop up in the newest Nolan movie because one assumes everyone wants a piece of the glory.
But honestly, that number is VERY comparable to the number of Oscar winners and nominees in Greta Gerwig’s new film, a filmmaker who ONLY directed her first MAINSTREAM feature in 2017, by which time Nolan, with a 20-year head start was ALREADY on Dunkirk.
AND SHE GETS TO HAVE A FILM BEING CALLED AN EQUAL COMPETITOR THIS SUMMER.
AND SHE BIRTHED A WHOLE CHILD EARLIER THIS YEAR?
With every new Greta movie, I come out wishing I had the ability to think as freely as her, possess an imagination so unbridled, untamed, unafraid, I too may be able to take an old story like Little Women, and still create something new. With Barbie, the writer director goes, as Will Ferrell’s character says in the film, beyond what the human mind can imagine, but not so much as a challenging the boundaries of cinematic storytelling, but more of a, how much can we turn Ryan Gosling into Varun Dhawan.
Gosling is fabulous as Stereotypical Ken, whose profession is simply, beach. This is not an acting performance that requires him to only look pretty, work on his abs, and have a dance-off with a gorgeous piece of my heart Simu Liu, but Barbie the movie needs him to become the literal face of patriarchy, absorbing it, letting it go to his head, and change the world as he knows it within 48 hours, WHILE continuing to pretend to be a silly character in a silly film. Is he Adam from Adam and Eve, is he every white world leader there has ever been? Is he the man who refuses to hear the word “no”, or is he just a basic ass surfer dude whose favorite band is Matchbox Twenty?
In Greta Gerwig’s world, Ken is all of the above, much like real life, where men reap most of the benefits of most systems they’ve only put in place, enabling them to be a million different things at the same time. The beauty of the performance lies in how easy Ryan Gosling makes it all look. When Ken accompanies Barbie to the real world, within hours he realizes what Barbie Land is missing is Patriarchy and men on horses, and he imports the basics of both. It’s very clever writing, mixing fantasy with magic realism, and some solid feminist commentary. As Barbie runs away from CEOs and senior management trying to put her “in a box”, Ken takes over Barbie Land all too easily and with the help of other men reduces accomplished Barbies simply to girlfriends and objects of desire.
It’s clear what Great Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are saying with their ridiculously playful movie, even though occasionally HOW they say it, tends to hit you over the head with a dull hammer a bit. America Ferrera as a human gets a wonderfully, designed to be rousing, but still basic, speech about the ridiculous expectations from women in everyday life. It’s not something you haven’t heard before, the ideas, even the words being spoken aren’t super fresh, but it does its intended job of one more time bluntly pointing out how important it is for women to just be pissed off on a regular basis, jab tak har micro-aggression par gussa nahi aayega, aur gusse ko zahir nahi karnege, saamne waale ko ghanta pata chalna hai?
Barbie’s attempt is to simply boil down patriarchy to its essential tenets — the world must be made easier for men, hence men will now make all the rules, and women will be made fun of, harmful stereotypes will be designed to be attached to women, a web of lies and injustices, to keep us occupied and confused within, so we may never have the strength to rise up to the point where structural gender-based discrimination may be tackled head on and defeated. It clearly is an interest for Gerwig to go to the genesis of an arrangement such as this, how is it that we’ve come to live in a world where random rules defining who does the housework exist? Real-life se behtar toh phir barbie ki make believe duniya hi ho gaya, jahaan na genitals hain, na gender norms.
Now, Barbie hit home, I don’t even know when in my viewing it became bhaari personal. As a female, whose job is literally to present opinion on the internet, Indian internet, where more than half of the people watching are male, every single thing that comes out of my mouth deepens the red on the target placed on our very visible faces. As I say this sentence out loud, I can almost see someone begin to type a #NotAllMen style comment defending themselves, assuming it’s specifically them being spoken about. Every couple of days when a video of mine goes up, I spend days ridden with anxiety, reading comments because I like to feel connected, but also dreading that one comment that will send me down an anxiety spiral. Just yesterday I was speaking with my husband saying “I wish the world weren’t so, I wish the internet were a kinder place, I wish I didn’t have to feel nervous all the time”. When you sit and think about how, as some with a platform and somewhat of a voice, I can help make the internet a more welcoming space for women, I can’t think of a better way than to keep doing what I do, week after week. It’s the only way.
Greta Gerwig also realizes the opportunity she has, the stage she has managed to reach, and the responsibility that now carries. Margot Robbie as her actor and also a producer in the film, is also clearly a believer in the same ideals and is also looking for the same satisfaction, of knowing they’re making a difference, helping. Instead of a hard-hitting drama, this time they chose humor, silly-ness, and lots and lots of pink. Bare-chested Ncuti Gatwa, a HILARIOUS Ryan Gosling Simu Liu dance-off, Will Ferrell in a pink tie, John Cena as a mermaid. The cast is all in on it, every last one having a blast. Kate McKinnon as weird Barbie is literally my perfect idea of a best friend, a woman deemed unhinged simply because she chooses to live on her own terms, societal expectations be damned. Yes, there is a stereotyped teenage daughter, with a stereotype-defeated mother, but I’m willing to overlook that, and frankly, the screenplay’s unexpected pacing issues in favor of an author Barbie woken up from her reveries wondering why under the influence of patriarchy was she suddenly so passionate about Zack Snyder’s justice league cut.
We’ve been there Barbie, we’ve all been there.
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Barbie is……at 1 point Helen Mirren in her voice over breaks the 4th wall and addresses Margot Robbie being too pretty an actor to complain about not looking good as Barbie, quite literally in the middle of the movie, that’s how much fun they’ve had with this one. Theatres mein lagi hai, bilkul dekhna, mere kehne par.
