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Barbie is many issues: an adept demonstration of how the fitting director can spin one thing nice from IP, a feminist empowerment story bathed in pink, and a set piece for Margot Robbie to do a few of her finest and most nuanced work. It’s additionally a movie that’s pure visible delight, with a hyper-specific aesthetic that’s a bit deeper than simply picture-perfect Dreamhouses and that particular shade of pink. In Barbie, the interiors act, similar to the characters, each to have a good time particular archetypes for what they’re and provide commentary on what they’re, and why.
(Should you haven’t seen Barbie and would really like your film expertise unsullied by spoilers, please shut this tab, go watch the film, after which return to this at your leisure.)
Within the movie, Barbie Land, the place Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and the entire different Barbies and Kens dwell, is a barely claustrophobic pink utopia wherein the patriarchy as an idea by no means really existed. Girls are in command of every little thing, together with however not restricted to the federal government, and in addition, on some degree, their very own lives. Kens, of which there are various, are merely sentient set dressing; they exist to be in service to Barbie and no matter she might have, and have little different company. At this level within the Barbie promotional cycle, we’re all aware of her numerous Dreamhouses, however to see Greta Gerwig’s tackle a feminist utopia on the massive display screen is thrilling. Pink is impartial; it’s the dominant shade in a world the place each shade is dialed as much as a scream, and to see all of it in mixture is a visible delight.
Barbie Land is actually a retirement group suffused with empowerment that in the first place appears interesting. With out the pesky affect of males and their horrible style, the Barbies are free to roam their panorama unburdened by outdoors opinion. Certain, every little thing of their respective houses is pretend, from the orange juice within the fridge to the toothpaste within the rest room, however as a result of these Barbies are basically ideas slightly than actual folks, they’re content material to exist in a world the place every little thing appears because it ought to, however isn’t actually something in any respect. The swimming swimming pools and seashores haven’t any water. Each home is an open construction with no partitions and no straightforward or sensical strategy to descend. (Barbies don’t ever use stairs, so when Robbie’s Barbie desires to come back downstairs and get into her automobile, she merely floats.) The whole lot of Barbie Land is supposed to speak freedom, however it’s stifling in its personal means. Its perfection is actually frictionless, however the Barbies in Barbie Land don’t know the rest.
Whereas the interiors of Barbie Land are good and tooth-achingly candy, there’s a barely extra sinister Barbie aesthetic lurking excessive on the hill, overseeing Barbie Land at a take away. Bizarre Barbie (Kate McKinnon), banished to the mountaintop as a result of she was “cherished too onerous,” lives in a postmodernist mansion that’s chaotic perfection. Jagged edges, psychedelic colours, and a structure paying homage to Meow Wolf create a way of distortion and imperfection: two key tenets of simply being alive. Whereas in all of Barbie Land perfection is anticipated, in Bizarre Barbie’s home, imperfection is the dominant trait, and the closest factor to the true world there’s.
The engine that drives Barbie is nothing greater than a easy existential disaster: at some point, Barbie’s irrepressible ideas of demise are merely an excessive amount of to bear and so she should enter the portal into the true world to reckon with the various trials, tribulations, and heartbreaks of being human. On this occasion, the true world is Los Angeles, particularly the grunginess of Venice Seaside, the place Barbie and her stowaway, Ken (Ryan Gosling), are met with two separate realities that they every should take care of alone: males are horrible to Barbie, and for Ken, the world is actually at his toes.
When the 2 doll/ideas are unleashed in Los Angeles and largely left to fend for themselves, there’s nothing to put in writing dwelling about in regard to their environment. The scuzziness of Venice Seaside and Los Angeles basically exists in sharp distinction to Barbie’s dominant aesthetic, which stays extraordinarily pink and effervescently optimistic, whilst she learns that the true world requires each humanity and connection—two issues she was beforehand unable to entry. These essential experiences are additionally missing within the brutalist monolith that’s Mattel HQ—an imposing skyscraper that, as set designer Sarah Greenwood instructed Home Stunning, is meant to have one foot in the true world and one other in Barbie Land.
The constructing is stuffed with darkish flooring lined with rows and rows of grey cubicles, a dystopian tackle the fashionable workplace atmosphere that’s in stark distinction to the open-plan, ethereal interiors most workplaces attempt for. Sure, that is meant to point that any company HQ is stuffed with peons chained to their desks pushing papers and slowly rotting within the midst of their very own futility and conformity, however additionally it is basically a toddler’s rendering of what “going to work” may seem like. This holds true for the boardroom, on the very high of the constructing, which encompasses a heart-shaped convention desk and overhead lighting, and a large field that serves as a portal for escaped Barbies to return from whence they got here.
The interiors in Barbie Land are irrevocably altered about midway by means of the movie, due to Ken. Whereas Barbie will get a tough lesson in being a lady, Ken teaches himself about patriarchy and brings his information again to the others. When males’s rights tradition involves Barbie Land, the primary influence is on the Dreamhouses. Ken’s information of patriarchy got here by means of some studying, most of which included books about horses and, ostensibly, the American West. The result’s maybe probably the most thrilling a part of the film’s aesthetics, solely due to how ridiculous it’s. Ken’s patriarchal fantasy is a bit bit like if Kanye West’s “Sure 2” music video met a dingy frat home: galloping horses on flat-screen TVs, velvet work that includes, sure, horses, Barcaloungers, pull-up bars, and basic mess.
Maybe it’s my private injury that led me to assume a few of these aesthetic touches are an enchancment from the unique homogeneity disguised in pink, however possibly there’s one thing there. Though the pristine perfection of Barbie’s Dreamhouse is sullied by the detritus of disgruntled masculinity, the house feels advanced and human: an apt metaphor for the journey Barbie begins on the finish of the movie (any additional element right here would tread into spoiler territory) and an honest analogue for the occasional bravery of being alive.
High Picture © Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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