If you haven’t been on Mars, in a hermitage or on a boat drifting in the ocean in recent weeks, you’ll know that a film about Barbie has been released on July 20 in Italy and around the world. Let’s clear up any doubts about the specific film right away: it is a commercial operation of the highest level that aims to bring millions of people from all genres, all ages, all social backgrounds, to the cinema. The vigorous marketing campaign involved several brands – in addition to Mattel which produces the film, it also includes brands of clothing, accessories, make-up, travel, books, cars, travel, newspapers – added a soundtrack signed by Oscar-winning producer Mark Ronson featuring artists such as Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Sam Smith and Nick Minaj: songs from the film, especially the catchphrase “Dance the Night Away”, are getting less and less on radio and social networks, and There are candidates for this. Leave us alone for a while. Until the blockade caused by the Hollywood actors’ strike, the film’s cast traveled far and wide between red carpets, photocalls and interviews, which were broadcast everywhere on social networks, touching the saturation effect.
The goal is clear: to make as many people as possible a part of the Barbie phenomenon so they can say “I was there”.
However, to do this you need to be confident. Barbie was sold as a comfort movie that, like comfort food, was designed to appeal to everyone and answer a primary need to have something soft under the teeth: pleasure is immediate, nutritional intake equal to zero, taste buds thank, rest less.
But if Warner Bros. executives, Mattel, and artists have been reiterating that Barbie really is a summer movie “for everyone,” the truth is that it’s not quite like that and that’s where Barbie’s real added value lies.
To understand why we have to go back to the origins of the film. Diablo Cody – the Oscar-winning screenwriter for Juno – wrote a draft script in 2015, then it was the turn of comedian Amy Schumer, who was approached to play Barbie, but ultimately declined, followed a few months later by Anne Hathaway. In 2018, actress Margot Robbie’s production company – which, in addition to starring in Barbie, actually produced the film – optioned the film rights, and a few years later it was announced that director Greta Gerwig would write and direct Barbie. Before stepping behind the camera, Gerwig was long an independent film actress; Over the years he has chosen to write, direct and play what are generally described as “strong characters”, as opposed to an overarching narrative that is still too formulaic. With her films and her choices in terms of communication and image, Greta Gerwig has managed to establish herself as the quintessential feminist director compared to her other colleagues such as Chloë Zao and Jane Campion.
There is no doubt that the mere fact of being snubbed on a few occasions in Oscar nominations has contributed to the image of an “inconvenient” performer around Gerwig, as opposed to present but cool: still photographs and behind-the-scenes footage of her films show us a young, beautiful and spirited woman, often dressed in the costume of the films she directed (for one scene in Lady Bird, Gerwig appears in her prom dress, in behind-the-scenes footage of Barbie, You can see him wearing the same pink suit as the hero) always happy and smiling along with his actors and actresses.
Barbie: plot, cast and trailer
Greta Gerwig wrote the screenplay for Barbie with partner Noah Baumbach during lockdown, and the result is a bold, intense, and certainly brilliant film by Hollywood standards. Mattel has let itself be fooled, knowing full well that self-irony is a firestorm for the rehabilitation of a company that has contributed to articulating a stereotypical female image over the years. The brand has taken a more inclusive approach over the years, but for Mattel, this film truly opens a new chapter in its history. Because amid the gaudy skirts, catchy songs, and plastic beaches, Barbie is a partisan, political, daring film. And it is paradoxical that such an openly commercial operation should broadcast such political and openly transfeminist messages.
Whatever happens – and it seems that, in the net of receipts, the film may win an Oscar – Barbie is already a unique film in the history of cinema, a perhaps unattainable experiment that combines high and low, politics and lightness, mass culture and subculture. A film that has become history with a capital S even before its release and will likely impact the lives of millions. And if you think about it, that’s exactly what great movies do, through a collective ritual that has mesmerized and inspired us for over a hundred years. That rite, often left for dead, is now more alive than ever. That ritual is called cinema.