Half of the “Barbenheimer” boom wave reached the Internet and therefore also Russia (licensed): Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy “Barbie” became a cult film and a cultural phenomenon that went beyond the big screen much earlier. this screen was shot. It’s a bit difficult to review the film after such a start: Inevitably, instead of watching the film directly, you constantly look for evidence of its genius, then sit down and write something about it, and on the other side of the film. On the page, the capital accumulated by the film becomes heavier. Capital is both semantic and financial: the highest-grossing film of 2023, the highest-grossing film directed by a woman, Warner Bros.’ highest-grossing film. and the 14th highest-grossing film in history overall (not adjusted for inflation).
The second aggravating circumstance is the gender (male) of the author of this text. Writing a review about Barbie is like writing a review about feminism, which is clearly an odd thing for a man to do (which isn’t something that stops a lot of people). It’s certainly possible to wear pink, following the example of Gerwig’s film’s huge number of viewers and viewers, but the experience of women socializing in a patriarchal world is probably a little harder to achieve in marketplaces. Unlike the pink t-shirt, you cannot order it. And without this, a film made by a woman, about a woman and for a woman, it seems, will only exist in some kind of shortened version (just like in Russian cinemas they showed a leaked copy of a cut copy with Korean subtitles).
But this is normal (not the cutting of subtitles, but the shortened version). Not every movie has to be for Ken. Moreover, all of the above does not deprive anyone of the right to form their own opinion about the picture and even express it. Gerwig’s film, which she co-wrote with her husband, cinematographer Noah Baumbach, in a way encourages men to do this, as it attempts to have an open dialogue with this part of the audience and (secretly) sees it as a target. . “Barbie” does not portray matriarchy as a utopia (a strange rhyme with the monstrous TV series “Two Hills”), but it does include men among the victims of the virus of patriarchy, which, as the movie turns out, unfortunately has nothing to do with horses. The victims are not the same as women, the arrow does not turn here, but They also get their share of meaningless pressures.
However, in the realm of social commentary, “Barbie” doesn’t pretend to be a genius or an original; Everything about patriarchy and toxic masculinity is about as obvious without it (and about capitalism, which Will Ferrell jokes about in the movie, too). But his point is this: Gerwig has made an excellent meta-movie. First of all, “Barbie” is a movie about both Barbie (the character) and “Barbie” (the phenomenon and the brand), and it is humorous in its own right. Secondly, “Barbie” (the movie) takes away the mechanics of playing with dolls and reveals a lot of interesting things in it. From the biblical anthropological myth (it’s interesting that the director is planning a film adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia; we won’t be saying goodbye to Christian ideas for long) to the process of actually directing a movie.
As if she’s joking with doll actors in a movie theater expressly sanctioned by Mattel (capitalism making money from criticizing capitalism is nice), Gerwig quotes Kubrick’s “A Space Odyssey” and the Wachowskis’ “The Matrix” with mock mischief, and another classic . But in general, everything is quite serious: Gerwig is already as important a chapter in the history of cinema as Kubrick and the Wachowskis. Because “Barbie” has become a movie you don’t even need to watch, it’s like you already know it, just like “Terminator” or “The Shining”; It has become part of the universal cultural code. As they say, he’s everything, he’s just Ken. Ben Kenough.