Bar­bie review – a gor­geous­ly weird block­buster event

It’s a great shame that through­out the Bar­bie press cycle, seem­ing­ly no one has asked Gre­ta Ger­wig about Mar­cel Proust. The mul­ti­hy­phen­ate is an avowed fan – there’s a throw­away joke about his (lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly) heavy work in Frances Ha, and in LWLies’ 2018 inter­view with her, she refers to the qua­si-Prous­t­ian mem­o­ry expe­ri­ence of mak­ing the semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Lady Bird.

In Bar­bie, her con­sumerist behe­moth that brings America’s sweet­heart out of the box and onto the screen, Proust once again makes an appear­ance, when Mar­got Robbie’s pic­ture-per­fect Stereo­typ­i­cal Bar­bie steps inside her plas­tic pack­ag­ing, and remarks that the famil­iar smell is a Prous­t­ian mem­o­ry. ​“Ugh, remem­ber Proust Bar­bie?” Will Ferrell’s name­less Mat­tell CEO nods to his team of Yes Men. ​“That did not sell well.”

Per­haps this could be dis­missed as anoth­er quirky joke, in a film that also makes ref­er­ence to The Sny­der Cut and the uni­ver­sal­ly beloved BBC adap­ta­tion of Pride and Prej­u­dice, but giv­en Gerwig’s his­to­ry, it seems unlike­ly that Proust is a name she threw out there as a twee nod for all the Hot Lit­er­a­ture Girls in the audience.

Instead, the ref­er­ence speaks to the way in which Bar­bie – a hyper-cor­po­rate stu­dio pic­ture with the mar­ket­ing bud­get to match – fits into the cin­e­mat­ic canon Ger­wig has been care­ful­ly curat­ing, but also the strange, often dis­con­cert­ing way in which the sub­lime (fine art, lit­er­a­ture, clas­si­cal music) sits along­side the irrefutably cor­po­rate (block­buster film­mak­ing, pop music, Bar­bie) in our mod­ern world.

When it was announced that Ger­wig would co-write and direct a live-action Bar­bie movie back in July 2021, many were scep­ti­cal about her tran­si­tion from indie dar­ling to the ulti­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of sani­tised cap­i­tal­ism. Even with uni­ver­sal­ly well-liked actors Mar­got Rob­bie and Ryan Gosling on board, how could Ger­wig pos­si­bly main­tain any artis­tic integri­ty while work­ing hand in hand with one of the biggest (and most liti­gious) toy com­pa­nies on earth? A litany of set pho­tos, teas­ing com­ments and one con­cern­ing New York­er arti­cle have done lit­tle to damp­en enthu­si­asm or reas­sure scep­tics. Would Gre­ta Gerwig’s Bar­bie feel like a Gre­ta Ger­wig film or a toy advert cre­at­ed by cor­po­rate com­mit­tee? Per­haps a secret, stranger, third thing?

The film opens with a scene that was heav­i­ly teased back in 2022, with a larg­er-than-life Bar­bie appear­ing as the mono­lith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Helen Mir­ren explains in voice-over the his­to­ry of dolls. It’s a cheeky move, posi­tion­ing some­thing as unmis­tak­ably fem­i­nine as Bar­bie along­side a film wide­ly regard­ed as one of The Great­est of All Time, but to be hon­est, Kubrick and Bar­bie have prob­a­bly had a sim­i­lar­ly vast cul­tur­al impact.

This intro­duc­tion segues into a whis­tle-stop tour of Bar­bie his­to­ry, in which we learn that the Bar­bi­es of Bar­bi­eland believe that their very exis­tence has solved all prob­lems of inequal­i­ty and intol­er­ance with­in The Real World. Cocooned in a pas­tel pink dream­land, Stereo­typ­i­cal Bar­bie (Rob­bie) and all her friends have ​“the best day every day” – that is, until Stereo­typ­i­cal Bar­bie starts expe­ri­enc­ing mal­func­tions, includ­ing flat feet, bad breath, and over­whelm­ing thoughts of dying.

But Bar­bie can’t die. So why can’t she stop think­ing about death? A meet­ing with Weird Bar­bie (Kate McK­in­non, Gerwig’s old col­lege friend, appear­ing as a doll who was ​“played with too hard”) reveals that there’s a link between Bar­bie and her ​‘per­son’ in the real world, and in order to fix the rift, she’ll have to jour­ney by car, plane, rock­et ship, boat, snow­mo­bile, camper­van, tan­dem bike and rollerblade to Los Ange­les, and make things right.

So Bar­bie sets off, with her trusty boyfriend Ken (Ryan Gosling, the most game he’s ever been) in tow, to track down Glo­ria (Amer­i­ca Fer­rera) and her tween daugh­ter Sasha (Ari­ana Green­blatt). But Barbie’s jour­ney to the real world attracts the atten­tion of Mattel’s cor­po­rate bods – an anony­mous group of men in suits who exist in a build­ing that repli­cates the grey offices of Jacques Tati’s Play­time – who imme­di­ate­ly set out to put Bar­bie back in her place and restore order.

So far, so straight­for­ward. Bar­bie sets itself up to be a fish-out-of-water sto­ry in the vain of Splash or Enchant­ed, but ends up a much stranger cre­ation, as the doll becomes aware not only of real­i­ty, but of the myr­i­ad com­pli­ca­tions that come with it – chiefly mem­o­ries, emo­tions, and pur­pose. While Bar­bie reck­ons with her exis­tence, Ken dis­cov­ers patri­archy and likes what he sees.

What starts as a quest to restore order to Bar­bi­eland soon becomes a Bat­tle of the Sex­es, and while there is some ques­tion­able gen­der essen­tial­ism at play (one must be either a Bar­bie or a Ken, not any com­bi­na­tion of the two, and in Bar­bi­eland, fem­i­nism seem­ing­ly nev­er had any cause to move past the Sec­ond Wave) the film suc­ceeds much more when it leans into its emo­tion­al core rather than when it tries to Do Fem­i­nism (a los­ing game for Bar­bie, which can rebrand as inclu­sive and self-dep­re­cate until the cows come home, but ulti­mate­ly remains part of a cap­i­tal­ist hellscape sell­ing #empow­er­ment and self-con­scious­ness to kids).

The emo­tion­al core of the film is pure Ger­wig, though, eas­i­ly linked to Lit­tle Women and Lady Bird in its exam­i­na­tion of the ways in which women relate to one anoth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly across gen­er­a­tions and fam­i­lies. Although Ger­wig wears her cin­e­mat­ic influ­ences proud­ly, from The Tru­man Show and The Young Girls of Rochefort to All That Jazz and The Gold­dig­gers of 1933, it also feels rem­i­nis­cent of Mike Mills’ 20^th Cen­tu­ry Women, in which Ger­wig starred as a free-spir­it­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er under­go­ing treat­ment for cer­vi­cal can­cer. That nos­tal­gic but clear-eyed film, in turn, was made of mem­o­ries, and in Bar­bie, for all its cor­po­rate sheen, you can see Gerwig’s fin­ger­prints, whether it’s in the use of Indi­go Girls and Match­box 20, or a lov­ing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ref­er­ence to Jer­ry Lewis’ The Ladies Man.

Much has been made of the film’s large sup­port­ing cast, and although Issa Rae (Pres­i­dent Bar­bie), Simu Liu (Ken), Kings­ley Ben-Adir (Ken) and Michael Cera (Allan) are giv­en the most to do out­side of the prin­ci­ples, every­one is per­fect­ly game and well-cast. Rob­bie and Gosling eschew any attempt at irony and embody the fan­tas­tic plas­tic that their roles require. Rob­bie is a burst of sun­shine who moves with char­ac­ter­is­tic grace but still man­ages to hit emo­tion­al beats con­vinc­ing­ly as she wres­tles to under­stand what she was made for.

Gosling is her foil in many regards – bom­bas­tic and exag­ger­at­ed, a mas­ter of phys­i­cal com­e­dy, capa­ble of cre­at­ing com­e­dy from some­thing as sim­ple as a bicep flex. He sings, he dances, he pea­cocks around in a mink coat after being inspired by a pic­ture of Sylvester Stal­lone. When Bar­bie becomes increas­ing­ly more self-aware, Ken becomes the oppo­site, as he strug­gles to envi­sion him­self as a sep­a­rate enti­ty from the doll he was cre­at­ed to serve.

This is the human strug­gle – to work out who we are, under­neath it all. If we are not our job, our house, our pos­ses­sions, our rela­tion­ships, or, as Ken sug­gests, ​“beach”, who are we? In Proust’s sem­i­nal ​‘In Search of Lost Time’ – the nov­el from which the con­cept of the Prous­t­ian mem­o­ry emerged, through the men­tion of a tea-soaked madeleine – the writer grap­ples with the inevitable pas­sage of time and fad­ing of memories.

To be human is to accept (and per­haps, at times, active­ly fight against) this irony: the more mem­o­ries we accrue, the less we remem­ber of them. The old­er we get, per­haps the more we realise we don’t know. Bar­bie is, against the odds, a film about what a joy it is to cre­ate those mem­o­ries to begin with. To spend time with loved ones, to play with toys and lose our­selves to imag­i­na­tion; to find friends, to have par­ties, to exist on our own terms. To remem­ber all the love, and the loss, and the strange, ago­nis­ing­ly short expe­ri­ence of being alive.

It’s not per­fect, but as Ferrera’s char­ac­ter remarks, ​“If you can’t make it per­fect, you can at least make it bet­ter.” Gerwig’s film­mak­ing enrich­es our world, earnest and joy­ous and thought­ful. Even under the guise of a piece of mas­sive IP, she main­tains that spir­it where oth­ers have failed. While some will inevitably miss the inti­ma­cy of her past work, Bar­bie proves Gerwig’s strengths as an artist are as applic­a­ble to big-bud­get, grand-scale film­mak­ing as they are the small ambi­tions of her mum­blecore years and past two solo efforts. She shares so much of her­self and per­son­al­i­ty, there’s a cre­ative spark that it’s hard to deny.

It’s a shame that Ger­wig, and so many oth­er tal­ent­ed film­mak­ers, are rarely giv­en the resources to pro­duce art with such ambi­tion, and I high­ly doubt stu­dios will learn the right lessons from a film like Bar­bie, should it meet or exceed its lofty box office expec­ta­tions (name­ly, they will assume that it’s the IP audi­ences love, rather than the ambi­tious, indi­vid­ual sto­ry­telling). But like Bar­bie, I sup­pose I haven’t giv­en up hope yet.

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