Barbenheimer (Barbie + Oppenheimer) Double Feature
Written by Cameron Geiser
Here’s a review of how Barbenheimer (2023’s Barbie and Oppenheimer) is as a double feature; is this a successful watch; what do we get out of both films being screened together; do we recommend this double feature to anyone else?
Barbenheimer PART I: FICTILE FISSION
How are Barbie and Oppenheimer individually?
Every now and then we cinephiles are graced by something that so perfectly fits our bifurcated times that we cannot avert our eyes, we simply must observe. Barbenheimer, as it has been dubbed by the internet, is the double feature event of 2023, and amazingly it's quite the time at your local cinema. For the uninitiated, Barbenheimer is a double billing of Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer since both films ended up being released on the same day.
When organizing a double feature (since most cinemas don't do this anymore) the most important choice, besides which two films to pair together, is the order of the films. For my group, we chose to stick to the meme name order of Barbenheimer and go with Barbie first. Admittedly, we chose Barbie first so we could have the good follow the bad, but oh, we were so *childishly* unprepared for what Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach had created for us. First of all, for months I had been asking myself how in the hell was the Barbie movie being made by Gerwig and Baumbach? “These are indie art film people… what are they doing here? With this property of all properties to choose from, why this? How this?” Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's because they actually had something to say. In fact, the whole script is surprisingly well done, punchy, and incredibly self-aware. Despite the first ten to fifteen minutes having the phrase “Hi Barbie!” spoken about two hundred times, be patient, it gets better. More than just an intellectual’s take on the doll though, everything about the film had far more thought put into it than I would have ever guessed going in. The production design is superb, colorful, silly, and notably lacking in obvious (or bad) CGI. In fact that seems to be one of the many traits shared between both of these films, but more on that later.
Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) is counselled by “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) after having irrepressible thoughts of death and is essentially shoved into her own Hero's Journey before we know it. While on her way to the real world to investigate how and why she has become mired in complex fears and anxieties, surprise! Ken (Ryan Gosling) has tagged along because as we know from earlier in the film, he only has a good day when Barbie is looking at him. This separation anxiety is only a small part of the problems between Barbie and Ken, but their diverging journeys once in the real world are, ironically, worlds apart. Barbie comes face to face with some brutal criticisms about her effect on girls and women for decades while Ken realizes that Men have power in the real world and becomes infatuated with a very surface-level understanding of the word Patriarchy. Also horses. He really likes Horses. Fast forward to the end credits where I still had “I’m just Ken” stuck in my head and my group exchanged looks of exasperation, joy, and confusion all around. This was not what we expected, and that's exciting!
Roughly twenty minutes later we were in another theater as the lights dimmed for Oppenheimer. There are two main threads running through Oppenheimer, the scenes in color titled Fission and the black and white scenes titled Fusion. Fission tells the subjective, while Fusion tells the objective, at least according to Nolan himself. Fission is all about Oppenheimer's personal life in academia, his love life and affairs with people that swam in Communist waters politically speaking. It also includes Oppenheimer's recruitment by the Military into the Manhattan project and their efforts to build the bomb over a few years. Fusion takes place later in Oppenheimer's life when Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who had just been appointed as the US secretary of commerce for Eisenhower's administration, ran up against pushback from the Senate for Strauss’ role in blacklisting Oppenheimer years prior. I could go more in-depth here, but both Barbie and Oppenheimer each have their own respective reviews here on Films Fatale that I encourage you to seek out for more information on both films instead of me regurgitating plot points.
In my opinion the best part of Oppenheimer is the acting. There are SO many recognizable faces in this film that I was floored by each new appearance. Everyone from Josh Peck and Josh Hartnett to Casey Affleck and Matt Damon or Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh! The cast is stacked with killer performances from everyone involved, but most especially Cillian Murphy as the titular Oppenheimer. There wasn't a moment that I didn't believe him on screen as that historical figure. Not to mention his adversarial component in Robert Downey Jr. as Strauss. You should see the film for the performances alone, but it does have a compelling enough narrative and atmosphere to give it a hearty recommendation. However, there are some quibbles I do have.
There are three things in particular that I take umbrage with, but it's mostly due to the abrasive sound design choices above all else. This is nothing new for Christopher Nolan, but his last few films in particular have been nauseating in this regard. It really is an odd creative choice that seems to be universally irksome. The last two are smaller in scale, but I wasn’t a fan of the editing style. It felt just a bit too frantic for my taste, but I acknowledge this is more of a personal taste issue than something truly bothersome in the filmmaking. And while I enjoyed the film, it feels a little overlong by the end of it. It all feels necessary within the context of the story being told, it's just that last twenty minutes or so where my audience was getting visibly jittery and maybe a little sleepy after the Trinity test.
Barbenheimer PART II: FucHSia Fusion
How is Barbenheimer as one event?
So, with both films thoughtfully consumed by my eyeballs in one afternoon- is Barbenheimer actually worth seeing as a double feature? I say yes, wholeheartedly. By pairing these two films together you achieve something greater than either one alone could muster. Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan having two wildly different popular films releasing on the same day is the strange brilliance of serendipity that we all needed this summer. Though, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while the two films have totally different color palettes, they share more than a few traits and ideas.
Both films explore the ideas of power and who wields it. In Barbie, Ken is pulled by the allure of Men having power in the real world and wants to replicate it in Barbieland with the other Kens, mainly because he has no skills to lean on in the real world. He's not so much the villain of the piece as he is misguided. In fact, it's when he realizes that to become the Ken he wants to be he has to understand who he is without Barbie, learning that each of us has the true power to self actualize our better selves instead of it lying in the genitals of men or women alone (Here's hoping that genital joke reference landed). Oppenheimer explores this idea in a myriad of ways as well. Not only with the very explosive power of the atomic bomb, but the power structures that controlled society at that time, like the red wave scare of McCarthyism, politicking in general, and patriotism.
Both films also keep the themes of cause and effect at the forefront of each film's story. While Oppenheimer's take is more literal at times, it examines the complexity of the human spirit thoughtfully while pairing the science of chain reactions with Oppenheimer's actions and choices in his own personal life. Barbie does this too, but with a quick monologue and a catchy song and dance number in the third act. Barbie asks its audience to consider the feelings of others in the best of ways and to seek self-reflection of your own actions and how they affect others.
Both films also focus on the existential anxieties of their main characters. Barbie suddenly becomes unsettled by the idea of death and some burgeoning disillusionment bubbling underneath all that pink brash joy. Oppenheimer likewise becomes unsettled by the notion of death and the unspooling fears of his actions. Though his fears are about the nuclear age of humanity that he has initiated, Barbie's fears are directly dealt with head-on in several scenes forcing her to reckon with the complexity of humanity with all of our unspoken insecurities and weird emotions. Which is ironically one of the few aspects I wish Nolan’s film had gone further with. Sure, we do get moments of Oppenheimer’s guilt and fear here and there for a shot or two in brief moments during the third act- but with a subject this weighty and full of dread, I felt this could have been more impactful. If these horrors had been as directly tackled by Nolan and company in their approach as the script for Barbie was in confronting these anxieties, I feel the power of the picture would have only deepened.
If you're looking for a cinematic challenge, or you just want to join in one of the few monoculture moments that we share anymore, then I highly recommend giving Barbenheimer a shot while you can! In this double feature, you can see the full range of humanity, confront your own fear of death, and witness cinematic glory! Join us.
Double Feature Rating: 4.5/5
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.