Review of Barbie (2023)

 The Barbie Outfit

Review of Barbie

“Fuck the patriarchy” 

• Taylor Swift, extended version of ‘All Too Well’ 

““She’s everything. He’s just Ken”

• Tag line for Barbie Movie

“Peace in patriarchy is war against women”

• Maria Miles

  
  
  
  

Barbie has been a strange tabula rasa since its creation in 1959. It was based on a German doll sold as a gag-gift to mostly men in European tobacco shops. One can only imagine the role play ideas for the original crowd. The American redesign was crafted by an aerospace engineer who worked on American military missiles. He also had been the sixth husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and he died by suicide… this isn’t covered in the film. The force behind Barbie’s creation was Ruth Handler, who named the doll, and her companion Ken, after her children. The sibling roots of their namesakes were also not covered in the film. Ruth’s forced resignation from the parent toy company, Mattel, was mentioned, but financial fraud is not something you want to dwell on… which brings us to the strange questions surrounding the storyline of a Barbie movie. What to talk about?

Ms. Gerwig & Mr. Baumbach are art house sensations. How do the creator of Lady Bird, a film showcasing the struggles of girls in 21st century America and the co-creators of Frances Ha, a movie showcasing a struggling woman artist, keep their credibility? They will be making what is essentially a product placement film for Mattel, “the leading toy company & owner of one of the strongest portfolios of children’s and family entertainment franchises in the world”. The boilerplate from Mattel’s website reads like fodder for corporate shills, rather than respected artists. And then there is the doll itself… yes Barbie has “evolved,”  eschewing the pre-civil rights, Mad Men world of her birth by embracing careers et al. But does any woman, aside from the mentally ill , want to be Barbie? Isn’t the name itself still a pejorative term for any female over the age of 14? How on earth can Ms. Gerwig create a film that won’t end in career suicide or corporate disaster? Talk about building tension! 

Well they did it… sort of. The film is a smash hit. Warner Brothers is making bank. Mattel’s girl is on everyone’s lips and audiences are stampeding, many in pink, to the theaters. There are some humorless cranks who are offended, but this only adds to cache. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach worked very hard… and you feel it. That’s the problem. The sweat of pleasing the many interested parties produces an extremely clever film… but not a good one. 

Things begin very well. Barbie parodies the paradigm cinema moment of man’s achievement from Kubrick’s 2001. Instead of the bone morphing into a space station, Barbie the astronaut floats above the world,. As we enter Barbieland, the portrait of this pink plastic paradise is… pitch perfect. Margot Robbie is a superb incarnation of the “stereotypical ” Barbie, with her trademark blonde locks. Sharing the synthetic aryan look is Ryan Gosling as the paradigm Ken. Both these characters are individuals, but they exist in a world of types. In other words Barbieland is ruled by the Barbies, plural, with a cast of supporting Kens (plural). Gosling's Ken rival is an Asian “Ken”. They both exist to attract the attention of the Margo Robie . The weird and wonderful land feels as if the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City was dropped on the beaches of Malibu. 

There is a strange conceit that gives this world the simulacrum of an actual child’s play area. All liquids are hard or invisible. Imagine a little girl giving Barbie a “pretend” drink and you witness what it is like for stereotype Barbie to sip coffee in the morning. Ken tries  to “surf” the ocean and is blocked by hard plastic water . The playfulness and slick recreations are marvelous. Sadly the tone of the film shifts and we enter a very convoluted drama that relies on Barbie having an existential crisis, interacting  with the “real world”and confronting, for the first time, the dreaded PATRIARCHY. 

Ken, played delightfully by Ryan Gosling,  is the foil in the story, but this never quite works because he is, by definition, a subservient dolt. One can feel the screenplay writers bending over backwards to give this professional idiot some standing. Are we really to believe that upon entering the real world Ken goes to a library to read about patriarchy? The gags regarding male arrogance and macho foolishness are hysterically funny, but in the end there is a narrative pull for Barbie to say that things will change in Barbieland in terms of Ken. She feels she has taken him for granted. Ken can stand tall. Ummmm…. No. I’m sure of few things in life but one might be: no one will ever buy a Ken doll without him being subservient to Barbie… The movie forces a very adult notion that fails to mesh with child’s play. It’s never a good thing when kids are forced to act as if they are adults. It doesn't work dramatically either. 

This film is strongest when it simply plays, rather than preaches. The tone instead resembles that of the  social satire of Citizen Ruth, a film poking fun at both sides of the abortion debate. It would seem more appropriate, given that subject matter is a doll designed for pre teen girls, if the film had the spirit of a lighthearted musical comedy, like Mamma Mia, or issue-less social satire, like the original Batman TV Series. In both cases fun is paramount while concerns about messaging take a back seat. Obviously this is a tall order given Barbie’s odd place in the social order . As I write this a news story broke about a sports commentator who was fired for using the term “Barbie” to describe another reporter. How could the writer/director avoid making our heroine more than a… Barbie doll. Strangely this also forces the issue of Ken’s status a professional flunky. In the world of Barbie… who cares? but the real world has real cultural baggage. And how to manage the baggage-handler?

Whereas Ken is a miscast delightful character, Will Ferrell, the CEO of Mattel in the “real world,” and his male Mattel minions, are simply a drag. Their role as clownish, corporate villains is muddled. Their cartoonishness belongs in Barbieland, rather than the “real world”. Kudos for the real Mattel executives for green-lighting the project. Certainly the filmmakers pushed the limit in directing jokes at the corporation. They are openly marked as chauvinistic with Barbie’s outfits being dictated by taking advantage of social changes, rather than championing women.  The real life suits are now laughing all the way to the bank, but had Barbie laid an egg, they might have lost their jobs. There’s some real drama. 

As for Gerwig and Baumbach, their creation might not be an artistic triumph, but has been genuine gold for the bottom line.  The blatant errors are there and go beyond the odd storyline and the portrayal of the corporation. Does this film need to be 2 hours long? That’s the same length as the the bio pic of Alan Turing, and he invented computers.  And what are we to make of Michael Cera as Allan? Mattel never really knew what to do with Ken’s brief sidekick and neither does Gerwig. Then there was an odd technical matter. This is a first rate spectacle with the fantasyland brimming with state-of-the-art props and special effects. There is a divine smoothness to the fakery - the houses, the ocean, the campfires. These are moving dioramas that are really captivating. I felt like a child pushing my nose against the glass in the Museum of Natural History.  I also wanted to jump in during the choreography of Ken’s ridiculous battle where weapons never hurt… and despite all this I felt the character’s faces to be under-lit  in many of the scenes. It is as if the basics were ignored in order to spend artistic energy on complicated social satire.

Perhaps there would have been more gold for everyone if the film stuck to Barbieland and eschewed reality and its never-ending source of conflict. This fantasy world already had its strange corner of intrigue:  the character, “Weird Barbie”, played by the brilliant comedic actress Kate McKinnon. She represented dolls that were mistreated by their guardians. Interestingly when Barbie is faced with thoughts of death, the other Barbies point her to “Weird Barbie”. It seems not all little girls have wholesome role-play fantasies with dolls. In some cases Barbie becomes a whipping post for anger and aggression.  It is interesting to note that McKinnon is often splayed on the floor, as if being nearly torn apart is “natural”. Once again there is no need for this film to plumb the depths of all social ills, but it is interesting that the filmmakers felt the need to go outside. Perhaps they were channeling the Wizard of Oz’s use of a separate plane of fantasy. The failure of Barbie is that the split between Barbieland and “the real world” is cloudy and confusing. There is no neat black and white vs. color delineation that showcases the clear line between the drudgery of real world cruelty and the joy of escapist fantasy. Would Barbie, while experiencing Los Angeles, ever want to click her heels three times and return to Barbieland? It’s a complicated question and that’s a problem. Why not simplify everything? There is enough drama “in house” to shape a story about Barbie facing her demons. The arc of the story, however, needs to be rooted in the anodyne innocence of playfulness, rather than the meanness of adults. 

I might be the wrong demographic to comment on this movie but I did find the most profound aspect of the film lay in the audience’s laughter. In my years of going to movie theaters I have never heard so many older women guffawing. This film touches something, despite what I perceive as a strangely muddled script. I never played with Barbie dolls and maybe to get the overall joke, you need to really live that experience. I felt this modern take on the meaning of Barbie fell short… too much stereotypical Barbie, not enough Weird Barbie… too much real world, not enough Barbieland…. Too much talk, not enough dancing…. Too much figuring out, not enough enjoying the moment.… but maybe I’m just another Ken, without the looks; or worse yet… an exploitative male Mattel executive. But in the end Gerwig’s work has grossed over a billion dollars. For that, everyone can thank… Barbie. 

Review of Tar (2022)

Requiem for a Maestro 

“In music one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. ”

 Alan Watts, commenting on purposelessness 

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein 

“Here’s to the battle, whatever it’s for.” Winners, song by Joe Raposo

 In the masterful documentary about the pianist Glen Gould, 32 Short Films About Glen Gould, the filmmakers never once showed him playing the piano. This disagreeable misanthrope shines despite never being seen tickling the ivories. This is how the writer/director Todd Field might have conceived of portraying the classical music virtuoso in his feature, Tar. Her story is the the off-key song of life, not the beautiful sounds of the orchestra. Sadly the breath her virtuosity matched her abhorrence as a character. The film needed less music, more art. 

Would a person, who violently attacks a rival conductor on stage in front of an audience, react quietly to being banished from seeing their beloved child by an angry spouse? Imagine if Dickens decided to have Ebenezer Scrooge focus on improving his business practices rather than saving Tiny Tim. It is a tribute to the artistry of Todd Field, Cate Blanchett and an ensemble of pros that, despite the flaws, there is no hiding superb craftsmanship. This feature falls in the “uncanny valley” of greatness, having all the appearances of being sublime, but lacking the essential element of, attraction. The critics have been merciless, one going so far as to use the word “Tar-ible” in the title of her review. There have been some Oscar nominations but the project has lost Universal Pictures $50 million to date. Financial failure and critical scorn is not surprising given the film’s premise. 

In an era where audience’s focus has been shaped by Tik Tok’s 3 minute limit, Mr. Field created a nearly 3 hour feature about: a classical music maestro; or as some would say maestra. Whatever quips one has with the final version, it is important to give a nod to the audacity of completing this project. No doubt there were a chorus of pre-production executives texting one another fire breathing emojis or simply…“WTF?” Given the films reception these have morphed into laughing smiley faces celebrating the downfall of the colleagues who gave the green light. But if you think feature film making is Machiavellian, wait until the curtain unveils the world of classical music. Tar isn’t so much a meditation on art as a portrait of a gangster. One associates such people with money and crime but the real mobsters show their colors when everything centers on prestige, not mammon. 

Cate Blanchett is the protagonist, Linda Tar, a girl from a cultural nether region of a blue collar, Long Island suburb. Her first move is to drop her first name for the more exotic “Lydia”. The film is a view of her journey to the apex of the, male dominated, classical music world…. Field tracks our heroine as she stalks the cultural landscape. At the New Yorker Festival Tar’s assistant polishes her charge and mouths the words as the the real-life Adam Gopnik reads the bio from of Lydia’s latest book. The audience coos at the endless list of formidable accomplishments. Lydia has the sang-froid of a K-pop boy-band making a public appearance. She is flawlessly hitting her marks and giving NYers exactly what is expected. She also radiates contempt for her assistant whose life is eternally bonded to the master, think of Tom Courtenay in The Dresser. 

After an interminable title sequence, the first image is our anti-hero getting ready to take the stage. Field rejects instantaneous clear meaning. Most mainstream features avoid pauses. Field gives Lydia life though the inaction of alone-time. Field’s character delineation relies on gesture and mood, more than the spoken word. Add to this unconventional presentation the use of obscure cutaways which build a sense of wonder. Who is changing Lydia’s Wikipedia profile? Who is spying and mocking Lydia via Instant Messenger? All this blurriness tends to collide with the ham-handed use of interviews and dinner conversation to move the exposition forward. The bloated backstory is too heavy a lift for the writer/director. 

The words are the scaffolding that unpacks the complicated intrigue. Lydia is bringing a noted piece of Gustav Mahler’s work to life in a specially produced recording based on a live performance at Berlin’s most prestigious concert hall. The choice of Mahler underscores her connection the legendary New York classical wunderkind Leonard Bernstein, who was her original mentor/inspiration. The concert coincides with a book release, which is the basis of the New Yorker interview. Blanchett’s character devolves, as her life decomposes. The performative, self-assured, superstar morphs into the strident, defensive, crank. The expository dialogue slows as we see our heroine do battle with her family, colleagues, landlords, lovers, neighbors…. The film is precise, but a grind. Audience members might want to yell the old Led Zepplin line to the maestro and her writer/director: “does anyone remember laughter?” 

Both Blanchett and Field strangely fall into the same deadening trap as Lydia. The protagonist, the filmmaker and the actress are brimming with talent. There is a parallel between Tar’s self-destruction and the film’s excruciating documentation of the downfall. They were both avoidable. Lydia stage-manages her fall by, needlessly, scorning those with the ability to destroy her career. Her backstabbing cleverness falls prey to seemingly wanton cruelty fueled by blinding narcissism. It didn’t have to happen, even for the meanest of the mean girls. A touch of restraint combined with a kind word every now and then and her demise would have been averted. The monster would pass as a lovable hero, except only to the most intimate and the post mortem biographer. The director and Blanchett are equally blind to a conceit that seems so elemental as to be the first lesson for those interested in drama: the audience must care. Tar is a humorless, self obsessed, mean-spirited bore. It’s not impossible to win the audience over to cheer-on the monster…. But you have to try. This film is an unvarnished procedural, rather than an empathetic portrait of a troubled individual. 

The Lydia of the first fifth of the film has a profession-obsessed weariness that repulses even the most ardent admirers of an anti-hero. The New Yorker interview sequence and the following meetings and diners with classical music insiders buttress her credentials as a genuine expert. Everything is… pitch perfect. Everything except the director’s ability to create empathy for this narcissist superstar. The memorable performance is accurate, but undesirable. Why would students passionately climb into bed with her; or executives trip over themselves to spend any time with her? Her exquisite taste and command of music never matches her supposed elan. She is the mirror image of her universally beloved mentor, Leonard Bernstein. The tragedy of Tar is that, despite the phenomenal craftsman of these immensely talented artists, the denouement leads to the strange emptiness at the heart of those poor soul’s afflicted by personality disorders. The point is for the audience to care for this person who doesn’t care. Instead we have a superb clinical portrait of a sociopath. 

Strangely there is one relationship that proves Lydia isn't completely heartless. Her spouse comments on the fact that the only non-transactional bond she has formed is with their daughter. The unbridled love is illustrated by tender moments and one of the most chilling scenes in the film. Her child is being bullied at school and Lydia channels Tony Soprano in the moment when another mobster propositions his daughter. Lydia doesn’t shatter teeth, but her warning to the classmate is equally chilling; in fact more so, as the maestro simply uses words without even raising her voice. The bully is immediately vanquished and even the most ardent detractor of our anti-hero is happy that the daughter, Petra, will be free of abuse. The actress, Mila Bogojevic, gives a remarkable performance that radiates pathos and warmth. If the audience had felt the same about Tar this would have been a film for the ages. 

The way to artfully hide Lydia’s deficits would be the mask of abstraction. Sadly Field clings to the straightforward chronological narrative. This only serves to place the story in the low earth orbit of Lydia’s zero-sum-game. Fields gives the narrative a rise and fall arc of gleaning lessons from a parable. Weirdly this is the un-nuanced world-view of deluded sociopaths living under the perpetual yoke of striving. Lydia will either win or lose….PERIOD! This might work for comic books but not character studies of complicated people. A careful portrait of a life should reject absolutism in favor of rendering the the infinite small moments that are more ambiguous. 

Tar is at its best with the small moments: the tailoring of the suit, the realization of being in a brothel, the mysterious noises, the metronome ticking onward…. There is too much on point proselytizing. The nadir is when she humiliates a student who finds fault with the heroes of the established canon. It seems a contrived set-piece to give commentary on the raging culture wars. Tar, unsurprisingly, champions the established order. The back and forth has a tiresome quality of assigned characters towing the party line. We needed more of Tar’s time in Queens as a child or her genuine interactions with her mentors…. Or even, perhaps, her time with the aboriginals in a South American jungle. These interactions would show vulnerability, rather than gloating. The tragedy isn’t her professional suicide, but her never-ending isolation. The denouement should have been the breakup with her daughter in Berlin, rather than exile as a leader of a cosplay video-game orchestra in a remote Asian backwater. The spectacle of her public downfall is breathtaking but rings hollow compared to the missing crescendo of the emotional cataclysm. The superstar pitcher banished to the grapefruit league is not as compelling as the loving mother who has forever lost her child; or the striver who realizes they have spent a lifetime on a fool’s errand….. think the final scene in Mephisto when the actor realizes he’s playing Faustus NOT Mephistopheles.

 Field and Blanchett seem to be captivated by the pyrotechnics of Lydia on stage. The real drama, however, is in the wings. What makes this film so frustrating is the glimmers of what might have been. There are moments of our anti-hero slides into the gooey, unmotivated…. tenderness. Lydia’s acrobatics, rather than the torment of her diseased soul, are center stage in Tar. The misstep bring to mind The Shakespearian actor Ian McKellen commenting on playing Macbeth. The epiphany came when a fellow actor gave him a small note regarding a famous soliloquy. When playing, “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” the emphasis should be on the word “and”, not “tomorrow.” This seemingly incidental direction helped the great thespian unpack the force of the tale “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” No doubt it would have been a memorable performance without the insight, but it might only have been “sound and fury.” This is Tar’s fate, to be merely impressive, rather than sublime.