The Current Cinema - David Hare finds a movie that is "fresh, intelligent" and much much more - BARBIE (Greta Gerwig, USA, 2023) ... and "cant wait to see it again"

When a new movie that’s fresh, intelligent, constantly questioning the ideas it keeps raising, is brilliantly acted by a uniformly great cast none of whom ever patronise the inspiration for the picture, has the best choreography and musical direction since West Side Story, displays production design and near-imperceptible CGI imagery to perfection, attracts audiences from barely teenage to cranky old pooves like me and other ancient and venerable cinephiles, and makes a billion US dollars in its first two weeks, well, not every fucking thing in this world is going to hell. 

For me the entire first hour of Barbie plays as a musical. Ryan Gosling was a Mouseketeer as a child actor and can really dance. But Gerwig’s Ken casting delivers a male chorus who can really shake it, and when Ryan joins the chorus, he really never hogs the screen.

 

An example of the incredibly dense meta-cinematic level of performance and “reality” that runs through the picture, at the moment in the last act when Barbie is stuck in deepest sadness declaring “I’m not pretty any more”, Helen Mirren’s “narrator”, not heard from for over an hour returns to declare over the soundtrack “Note to the film makers, Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast when you’re giving a speech about feeling ugly.” It’s completely disarming. I was told by my family that I laughed too loud at that moment. I beg to differ.

 

 I didn’t really connect with Gerwig's earlier Frances Ha in part because I didn’t connect with Gerwig’s character in it. (Although I very much liked Baumbach’s direction of it.) After seeing Barbie I came home and put on Frances Ha again. It had me in tears as often as not. From sheer pleasure. And I will confess I was wiping my eyes quite a bit during Barbie,  as well, from sheer pleasure.

 

I can’t wait to see it again.