The year of our Lord 2023 has gone on this long for one reason only: to be a vessel for the cinematic event of the decade. We have all heard the buzz around Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for months on end now. The winds of heaven are constantly changing, and the shape they will take is inherently unknowable to us. They have fortunately deigned to gift us with one momentous occurrence. These two films were slated to release on the exact same day. The hidden dragon of Barbenheimer has now erupted from the murky waters of the film industry, and much of the world has experienced its wonder. But many still sit at home, wringing their hands, pondering that most important question: “Which to see first?” This decision can seem quite daunting, however the answer can be found. And that is what we shall do today.
Barbie and Oppenheimer, to the untrained eye, might simply appear to be two regular old films. One a historical drama about the second old war, the other a bubbly comedy based on a cherished household brand. But the essence of these films cuts much deeper. And in breaking them down into what they truly are, we can see precisely the order in which one must consume them. To reach this conclusion, we must first investigate the path our society has gone down to reach this point. We must turn back time to the dark days that followed the Great War.
World War I, that war which was so great, wounded our collective consciousness. The order that had ruled for centuries was destroyed, people experienced loss on an unprecedented scale, and the world seemed devoid of hope. This gave rise do a deep dread which manifested as a wave of nihilism. A resignation to the meaningless of life. This attitude can be summed up by Schopenhauer’s famous line, “Let’s all go kill ourselves.” Now which of these two films best espouses this same view? Why the bleak, unforgiving story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer (2023).
The tale of Mr. Oppenheimer shows us a world that is doomed. And that world is, indeed, the same one that we live in today. Just older, and only sometimes in black and white. Oppenheimer is a brilliant genius, whose only downfall was his infantile naïveté and self-importance. The Manhattan Project allowed Robert to achieve his two lifelong goals: to be seen as very important, and to create a weapon capable of breaking the world record for civilian casualties.
This weapon, this atomic bomb, caused an explosion much larger than an atom. An explosion that radiated through the hearts and skulls of all of humanity. How could anyone continue living as they did before? At any moment, the world could be engulfed in a sea of nuclear hellfire, and humanity forever extinguished. Leaving the theater after the conclusion of this film will have you thinking as Schopenhauer and his ilk did. The world is doomed. Why go on? Why even put in the effort of ending it all when the bombs will soon drop and do the job for you? Before this crisis of the mind takes you, step back into the theater, and regain your composure with the next film of the hour: Barbie.
Barbie is a perfect follow-up to the darkness of Oppenheimer. It issues a direct challenge to those feelings of hopelessness that you will most certainly be feeling after the previous film. In this manner, it mirrors the second step in our look back at history. The rise of the existentialists.
Another set of thinkers attempted to shore up the souls of those burdened by the state of the world. The existentialists came out of the woodwork to tell the world of their startling idea: you should not kill yourself! Barbie encounters a similar journey. She lives in a beautiful, perfect world, where her desires are sated each and every day. This harmony is broken as Barbie begins to contemplate the realities of life and is filled with hopelessness. But rather than shooting herself in the head with a pink, plastic gun, Barbie continues on. She seeks to see and understand the real world. And it crushes her. Her perception of reality was all a façade, brought on by the eternal summer she had been living in.
And for a moment, Barbie lies down and resigns herself to her fate. She sees no way forward through the brutality and evil of the world. But she then has a revelation. Maybe nothing she knew was true. Maybe her life will never be the same. Maybe she must always live with that knowledge of the bomb, but that does not mean she must live in the shadow of its mushroom cloud. No, she can still reach out and forge her own destiny. She can laugh in the face of the absurdity of it all and choose to begin her life anew in spite of it.
Much like the atom bomb, the revelations of Barbie cannot be undone. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, we must live with the consequences of it forever. Barbenheimer is the splitting of a new atom. The splitting of the atom of the human spirit. And this explosion will ripple through our lives in ways we cannot yet foresee. We might never be the same again. But the essential question in the wake of this is does that really matter? So go out now. Purchase your tickets. And let your psyche first be hit with Little Boy Oppenheimer and then blasted again by the Fat Man that is Barbie.
