Atomic Blonde: Our Film Critics Discuss ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’
metroweekly.comBarbie and Christopher Nolan’s epic yet introspective, all-star cast biopic Oppenheimer spawned the summer’s most unlikely double feature.The teams behind both films were smart enough to catch on to the public’s pitting the world’s most famous doll against the man who birthed the Bomb.And the team behind this dual review, having completed the double feature in Barbie–Oppenheimer order, can report that both films are smart enough to recognize, respectively, the stereotypical girlishness that Barbie represents, and the inarguably patriarchal society that J.
Robert Oppenheimer both represented and at times resisted.Barbie, co-written by Ladybird and Little Women Oscar nominee Gerwig and her Oscar-nominated husband Noah Baumbach, actually turns examining the toy’s impact on generations of girls and women into its whole raison d’être.
The movie’s lead Barbie, played pretty much to perfection by Margot Robbie, is the quintessential version of the doll, “Stereotypical” Barbie — blonde, blue-eyed, eternally effervescent.Yet, she lives in a stunningly realized, life-sized plastic Barbie Land filled with Barbies of all shapes, races, complexions, occupations, and even genders, though that last aspect is referenced only via casting Hari Nef, best known for her role on Transparent, also as Barbie.Issa Rae, delivering many of the film’s funniest lines, is chipper, inspirational President Barbie.
Pop star Dua Lipa splashes up as Mermaid Barbie. All these women are Barbie, our Barbie explains. But who are we, really, and what happens when we die, Barbie wonders.In a hilarious record-skip in her happy-go-lucky life, Barbie starts pondering existential questions that even Kate McKinnon’s wise Weird Barbie can’t answer.
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