Barbenheimer: The Red Door

A funny thing happened on my way to see Insidious: The Red Door. Moments before I could buy my ticket, the showtime disappeared from the terminal like it had been erased by The Entity. I asked a cinemaworker about it and they informed me gravely that the screening had been canceled to make way for the behemoth; Barbie needed more screens. 

I hurried over to a different movie theater. While I was waiting in line, someone from the ticket booth announced that all Oppenheimer screenings were sold out and only a 9:40 pm Barbie screening remained. Half of the line left. The other decided to cut their losses and join me for Patrick Wilson's directorial debut. There were maybe 5 empty seats and we were the least packed room in the theater.

Insidious was good; Patrick Wilson was able to elicit some piercing screams from the would-be Barbie fans behind me. Some of those scares were clearly the result of a studio needling him to move away from his character drama desires, but despite that he made a movie so personal he even sings the end credits song. (It is maybe the worst end credits song ever, which endears it to me.)

You can accuse Barbie of being a commercial and Oppenheimer of being...about a bad thing, but there's no claiming that either of this weekend's titans are hack work. These are extremely directed movies, loudly embodying the storytellers who made them. There are slicker, less idiosyncratic films inside both: Nolan could've scrapped the two congressional hearings and focused on the bomb. Gerwig could've foregone the question of "what does it mean to be a woman in 2023" and given us the screwball comedy that was advertised in Progressive ads. Both of those movies would've slapped. But watching these movies felt like having a late night conversation with an old friend: "what does it mean to be trapped in plastic, living a girlhood fantasy of womanhood, and then to be thrust into the real world?" "are my moral leanings just further grasps at control? an attempt to reframe the narrative of my life so I am seen as a tragic hero, instead of the destroyer of mankind?" 

You only get to make so many movies in the 21st century, so why not make each one a reflection of your soul? You can feel a sense of responsibility in both films, too; Given the prompts of the father of nuclear technology and the world's pre-eminent icon of femininity, both filmmakers felt the need to satisfy audience demand while questioning their subject matter. While Barbie is a conduit for Gerwig to tell a story about the perils of growing up, about a mother and daughter listening to Indigo Girls together in the car, it's clear that she also feels a need to acknowledge the silliness of making a movie about a piece of 1960's plastic, while also entertaining the millions of young girls who will see the film regardless of what the MPAA rates it. While making fun of the fact that our adult box office heroes are more plastic and sexless than ever, Gerwig still wants to make a movie that appeals to the kids that the dolls were designed for in the first place. 

Watching Oppenheimer, it feels like Nolan wanted to make something that, were it to be the last movie ever, would more or less sum up the human experience before nuclear annihilation wipes it out altogether. After an apocalyptic public health crisis buggered the release of Tenet, you can feel Nolan frantically trying to fit everything in. "If I don't capture two beautiful actors having sex in a uniquely Christopher Nolan-y way, will I ever get the chance again???" More than ever, sitting with an audience to watch Oppenheimer, I could feel how that audience has changed since Dunkirk. Our own glimpses of the apocalypse through COVID, through rising temperatures, through nuclear instability, feel cinematically reflected back at us through the work of a man whose filmography has spanned my 25 years of living. At the same time, there are plenty of moments that betray Nolan's populist spirit. Every time Einstein shows up it feels like an MCU cameo, and you can the feel *pause for applause" moment after he makes references to "some junior senator from Massachusetts...his name? Kennedy, John F.”

As franchises have continued to dominate, I've noticed a sense of desperation from the star studded casts of director-driven films, like this may be our last chance to make art before we're crushed under the boot of algorithmic IP forever. From Babylon to Amsterdam to Glass Onion, it feels like the counter strategy to the cinematic universe is just to fire celebrity buckshot at the public until something hits. Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan have been handed the keys to the kingdom, with the best actors and finest craftsmen all working to embody their creative vision. And this time, it worked.

Oppenheimer made me terrified to die and Barbie made me glad to be alive. They are unique, flawed works from great artists and everyone is absolutely losing their minds over them. Feed a million movies into the most advanced AI and they could not churn out something this idiosyncratic—the films' imperfections make them all the better to talk about. Endgame was the last time cinema so captured the public imagination, but you weren't allowed to fucking say anything about it. Without the pall of spoilers, all sorts of strangers are making sense of these movies together. For years, TV has had a monopoly on the middle class dinner conversation, but this weekend we took it back. In spite of global terror and industry fuckery, this weekend it felt like movies were on the upswing. Thank you Chris, thank you Greta, thank you moviegoers. Barbenheimer forever, baby.