My Day of Barbenheimer
Come on Oppie, let's go party.
At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to claim some sort of cinephile hipster points, I feel like I was early to the Barbenheimer train. Let the record state that, on April 26, 2022, a full year before “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” memes were filling everyone’s feeds, I tweeted “no joke, greta gerwig/ noah baumbach/ margot robbie barbie is by far my most anticipated movie for the near future.” And while I perhaps didn’t share my enthusiasm for “Oppenheimer” as publicly, a new film from Christopher Nolan was always going to be on my to-watch list. When the idea of watching both films in one day on their shared opening weekend pierced the popular consciousness, it was a no-brainer. I was in. I looked forward to Barbenheimer weekend more than some holidays.
The crucial question when it comes to a Barbenheimer double feature is which order to watch them in. I’ve seen some make the case for “Barbie,” then “Oppenheimer.” It makes sense, on a certain level, to watch the brightly-colored comedy in the daytime and the grim drama after sunset. But I was more persuaded by cases for the inverse; that the dark tone of “Oppenheimer” would work as a contemplative start to the day, with “Barbie” serving as an end-of-day pick-me-up.
Or, as Lynda Carter put it, “You have to see Oppenheimer first. This is because Barbie lives in the world that Oppenheimer built.”
On the morning of July 22, 2023, I woke up energized for a long day at the movies.
Of course, I had to dress the part, too.
For “Oppenheimer,” I did my best impression of someone who could be spotted milling about Los Alamos in the mid-1940s. My outfit consisted of a white shirt, striped tie, brown tweed sport coat, gray wool pants, brown pork pie hat, and black oxfords. Thankfully, the weather that morning was, having taken a pleasant break from weeks of tropical humidity, mild enough that I could comfortably wear said outfit while walking to the theater.
Inside the Village East Cinema, nearly every seat of the gorgeous, historic Jaffe Art Theater was filled for the 11:40 a.m. screening of “Oppenheimer” (in 70 mm!). I showed up early, recalling that the last time I’d seen a movie projected on film in this theater, “Licorice Pizza” back in 2021, it had started right at the posted time, with no trailers. This time, though, there were two: “The Holdovers,” which looked charming, and “The Exorcist: Believer,” which looked abysmal and actually elicited derisive laughter from the crowd.
When the film began, a reverent hush fell over the theater. For the next three hours, I was rapt.
Spoilers for “Oppenheimer” from this point forward.
I’m far from the first person to make this comparison, but the structuring of “Oppenheimer” is remarkably reminiscent of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” one of my favorite films. Both films center on two meetings, set toward the end of the story’s linear timeline, beginning in these meetings and using the depositions therein to move backward in time as we peel apart the creation of something with world-shaking consequences, the control of which has now exceeded the grasp of its creator. Beyond structure, both Nolan and Fincher’s films are, despite being conversation-centric dramas, remarkably fast-paced and propulsive.
Particularly after the mixed reception of “Tenet” (which I nonetheless enjoyed), “Oppenheimer” is an absolute triumph for Nolan. Cillian Murphy, finally elevated to leading man after years in Nolan’s ensembles, gives a powerful lead performance, portraying the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer as a truly haunted man. So many of the film’s contemplative moments wouldn’t be half as effective without Murphy’s icy-blue thousand-yard stare.
While “Oppenheimer” largely plays out as a historical drama grounded in reality, brief, effective moments of surrealism reveal Oppenheimer’s subjectivity. In one scene, Oppenheimer learns of the death of Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), with whom he had carried on a years-long affair, even continuing after his marriage to his wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt). Tatlock’s death, from drowning in her bathtub, was officially declared a suicide. Yet, in momentary flashes, we see a gloved hand on Tatlock, implying foul play, that she may have been killed for being a Communist Party member with close ties to Oppenheimer.
Perhaps the film’s most intense, harrowing moment comes when Oppenheimer is called to deliver a triumphant speech to his colleagues at Los Alamos after the bombing of Hiroshima. Oppenheimer seems to dissociate before the crowd, cheering the bomb with a jingoism and false joviality that makes him seem nigh-possessed. Then, the sound of cheering cuts out. Oppenheimer hallucinates, seeing a flash of light engulf the crowd. He stares helplessly at a young woman in the front row as the skin begins to peel off her face. Then, the cheering cuts back in, with the abrupt, shocking impact of a jumpscare. Oppenheimer’s adoring coworkers are now an inescapable human hydra, engulfing him from all sides. As Oppenheimer leaves the stage, he looks down and sees that he has stepped on a charred corpse. It’s a sequence more intense and viscerally upsetting than plenty of horror films, placed in the midst of what is ostensibly a straight-laced biopic.
On a bit of a tangent, I found the politics of “Oppenheimer” fascinating. It’s become almost cliche in film buff circles to claim that Nolan is a conservative— did you notice that Batman wiretapping phones to defeat the Joker in “The Dark Knight” is reminiscent of the Patriot Act? Or that Bane’s followers in “The Dark Knight Rises” resemble Occupy Wall Street? Yet, in “Oppenheimer,” our leading man is, though perhaps not the card-carrying Communist his enemies accuse him of being, certainly on the left.
Communists, throughout the film, are shown to be sympathetic and humane. In contrast, Lewis Strauss, a conservative Republican played with conniving charm by Robert Downey Jr., is the closest thing the film has to a singular human villain. McCarthyist Red Scare fearmongering is lampooned. Nolan’s script reveals the callousness and inhumanity of the military-industrial complex, as Oppenheimer himself realizes the genie that is the atom bomb cannot be put back inside its bottle. While Oppenheimer is a deeply flawed individual, his left-wing sympathies are not shown to be one of these flaws. Rather, it is his concessions to centrist and conservative establishment figures that lead to his downfall.
Admittedly, “Oppenheimer” isn’t exactly a socialist polemic, instead leaning further into moral ambiguity among everyone but the most vociferous warmongers. I’m not sure that I necessarily fall into the camp that we can fully glean a person’s true inner beliefs from their public-facing artistic works, anyway. But “Oppenheimer” certainly complicates whatever impression some viewers may have formed of Nolan as a right-leaning filmmaker.
Going into “Oppenheimer,” I had, wrongly, assumed the film would end shortly after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But instead, we witness how Oppenheimer’s reputation was systematically destroyed by warmongering government officials, for whom the only takeaway from the atomic bombings was the need to build even bigger bombs.
The film’s final scene is a chilling mic drop. We see an exchange between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti). At the end of the conversation, Oppenheimer reminds Einstein of a time when, years prior, before the first nuclear tests, Oppenheimer had worried that an atomic blast might ignite the Earth’s entire atmosphere, and came to Einstein for advice.
“We thought we might start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire world,” Oppenheimer says.
“What of it?” replies Einstein.
“I believe we did,” Oppenheimer says.
Einstein walks away, and Oppenheimer stares into the distance. Rain begins to fall, thudding onto the brim of Oppenheimer’s hat. As Murphy’s intense gaze pierces your soul, we see the horrifying visions in Oppenheimer’s mind: nuclear hellfire engulfing the globe. Oppenheimer stares into the raindrops, recalling the film’s opening, where we saw him as a college student, watching rain land in a puddle. Now, looking at those reverberating circles, all we see are the blast radiuses of atomic warheads.
As the credits rolled on “Oppenheimer,” I sat in stunned silence. My expectations, already fairly high, had been vastly exceeded. Though far from a light watch, it was a shockingly powerful one.
I left the theater still unpacking what I had witnessed. Then, it was time to go home, switch outfits, and get ready to get my “Barbie” on.
For my “Barbie” outfit, I tried a variety of outfit combinations, exhausting every pink article of clothing I own. A pink Adidas track jacket was in strong contention, but I really couldn’t bring myself to go back out in the heat with a jacket on. Ultimately, I went with a white T-shirt with pink pants and a coral-colored sweater tied around my neck.
When I arrived at the Regal Union Square for the 8:40 showing of “Barbie,” exuberant crowds filled the dark, neon-lit lobby. Seeing “Oppenheimer” in a grand, old-school theater, then seeing “Barbie” in a sleek, colorful one felt amusingly on-brand.
Spoilers for “Barbie” from this point forward.
Going into “Barbie,” I was excited, but also not quite sure what to expect. From the film’s marketing, I knew I could expect a candy-colored comedy. I was excited for the performances of the two leads, and particularly ready to see Ryan Gosling flexing his comedic chops again— my favorite performance of his might just be in the criminally underrated 2016 comedy “The Nice Guys,” which I recommend at every opportunity. However, I was also thinking about Gerwig’s track record with films like “Lady Bird.” Not to mention that she had co-written the script for “Barbie” with Baumbach, a partnership that had produced work like “Frances Ha.” Given this, I also expected that “Barbie” would delve into thornier emotional territory. I was not disappointed on either front.
Just from a purely visual level, “Barbie” is a triumph, a reminder of the expressive joys of thoughtful, meticulous production and set design in an era where so many blockbusters are filmed on green screens and sorted out in post. Every performance in the film’s ensemble of Barbies and Kens is on a fine-tuned comic frequency. Robbie and Gosling are as wonderful as I had hoped. The film’s unexpected standouts, though, might just be Hari Nef as Dr. Barbie, whose droll delivery has echoes of Jennifer Coolidge, and Michael Cera as Allan, Ken’s oft-overlooked alleged best friend.
When the film veered into commentary on gender, I found myself the slightest bit leery. Gerwig’s filmography is rich with commentary on womanhood, with mother-daughter relationships being a specific recurring theme. However, I feared that the fraught legacy of Barbie as a product might become a stumbling block. Ultimately, I was relieved. Though some tired jokes about mansplaining felt slightly too close to something from BuzzFeed circa 2014, the film’s ultimate conclusions and observations are refreshing and original. I can’t personally speak to how satisfactory Barbie’s realizations about feminism are for women viewers, but they seemed to resonate with the largely female crowd at my screening and felt narratively well-earned.
Speaking from a slightly more personal perspective, Ken’s arc is a fascinating reflection on modern masculinity. Much of the film’s marketing has pointed out Ken’s comparative blandness, embodied in the phrase “He’s just Ken.” It’s this emptiness and lack of purpose that draws him to aggro, dude-bro chauvinism. It’s figures of patriarchy from the real world who, for the first time in his life, give Ken the sense of affirmation he never got from Barbie. But this, too, is hollow, ultimately leaving Ken no more genuinely self-actualized than before. It’s an incisive read on the allure and toxicity of the manosphere. Ultimately, “Barbie” posits, men might find a true sense of purpose not in put-ons of alpha masculinity, but in reaching within to develop a sense of self-worth beyond their possessions or romantic exploits. For all the (largely online) kerfuffle about “Barbie” being allegedly anti-male, it’s actually remarkably kind to men. Without taking away from Gerwig’s own abilities as a filmmaker and writer, it seems likely that Baumbach’s presence as a co-writer helped in this regard, given his own filmography’s frequent tackling of insecure masculinity in films like “The Meyerowitz Stories.”
It’s all these wonderful aspects that make me wish I didn’t also have a few qualms that, for me, held “Barbie” back from its full potential. In sharp contrast to the glorious colors of Barbieland, the scenes in the real world have the visual flatness of a car commercial, where a more intentional desaturation or exaggerated grime could better serve the contrast between these two realms. While I did find the conclusions to Barbie and Ken’s arcs satisfying, they also feel slightly sped through and may have been better fleshed out with another 10 minutes or so of reflection, or at least cooldown time from the film’s madcap comedy climax.
“Barbie” has a couple of wonderfully weird moments that are among the film’s highlights. Helen Mirren, serving as the narrator, openly states that Robbie is so beautiful that Barbie’s fears of losing her looks don’t quite work. At one low point, the film cuts away from the narrative to a faux television commercial for “Depression Barbie.” In the end, I found myself wishing that “Barbie” had dipped its toes into the surreal even further. But maybe this desire for a more avant-garde sensibility and greater emotional reflectiveness from “Barbie” is a misstep on my part. I approached “Barbie” as “another film from Greta Gerwig, co-written by Noah Baumbach,” rather than “a blockbuster comedy about Barbie.” All that aside, I enjoyed the film quite a bit and ended my Barbenheimer day satisfied.
More than anything, this double feature served as a terrific reminder of what I love about the movies. That day’s viewing consisted of two tonally opposite films, a solemn three-hour historical drama and a fantastical comedy that clocks in at around 100 minutes before credits. But spending my day with packed, enthusiastic crowds, watching two wholly original visions from some of cinema’s best big-scale storytellers, was a moving collective event that watching Netflix at home will never be able to compare to.
So, as I write this amid the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, I can only hope that the Barbenheimer phenomenon serves as a reminder to studio heads of the value of the artists who make cinema happen and that they are more than deserving of the fairer compensation they’re asking for. Or maybe the only lesson they’ll take away from this is trying to astroturf a “Saw Patrol” double feature of “Saw X” and “PAW Patrol” in September into meme status.