Barbie

BARBIE   ***1/2

Greta Gerwig

2023

IDEA:  When Barbie is overcome with irrepressible thoughts of her mortality, she ventures into the real world to find the solution to her malaise.

BLURB:  From its very existence to its narrative and themes, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie prompts us to consider the relationships between art and commerce, people and the objects they make and use in a consumer-capitalist mass culture. The nebulous boundary between the film’s Barbieland and the “Real World” suggests the protean interchange we have with the culture we create, a conversation in which ideology flows both ways. Gerwig and Baumbach ask us, with a balance of irreverence and earnestness: how does a branded product like Barbie become more than a commodity? Who gets to decide what she represents, and in what context? Gerwig’s film answers that by positing a Barbie that promotes the authenticity and diversity she has historically been decried for disavowing. The director at once fashions a feature-length Mattel commercial that rehabilitates the doll’s image in the name of feminism – i.e., Barbie has always been about empowering the aspirations of girls – and indicates the ways in which the toy has conditioned girls with a sexist, idealized concept of womanhood, which, going back to the commercial aspect, can be transcended through the evolution of the brand to reflect changing societal attitudes. So yes, Gerwig plays nice with Mattel, but her film is also genuinely artful and clever, a showcase for incredible craft and inspired ideas and performances, for auteurist idiosyncrasy within the parameters of big-budget studio mandates. Moreover, it’s a poignant coming-of-age story that feels of a piece with Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women, films that candidly grapple with the anxieties and desires of young women negotiating their growing independence. Like Toy Story, Gerwig’s Barbie proves that our childhood toys can be among the most acute conduits for existential exploration.