At the weekend I saw "Barbenheimer" in the cinema. We watched "Barbie" and then "Oppenheimer" with a short break in between. I was later told that that's the order a psychopath watches them. I think we chose that order mainly so we could fit lunch into the programme.
Oppenheimer was good, but slightly disappointing. Too long, too noisy, too complicated. I was hoping for this generation's "The Right Stuff" about the Manhattan Project. That section was only about 45 minutes long, the rest of it was a political drama. And it was all told out of order, like a boring "Reservoir Dogs".
"Barbie" was a lot of fun. It was funny and it looked amazing. A lot of people have been talking about whether it's sexist or woke or anti-woke. For my money, those people must have gone into the cinema with wildly over-sensitive sexism detectors. My sacrilege alarm went off way before my sexism alarm ever would have: You've got a real yet unreachable magical realm that is concerned with the wellbeing and development of mortal man. You've got an emissary from there who visits us, is betrayed, is sent back, and then after a short break comes back to Earth. All well and good so far, Christ and Batman are the two origin stories that nobody every stops telling. What I spotted is that She was chief (or at least most angelic) among the angels, so I think that would make her Lucifer. She visited out of selfishness and vanity, not love and duty. When She was caught and her hands were just about to be bound She lost her nerve and ran away. When She returned to Heaven / Barbieland it was to wage war, not to absolve the sins of all mankind.
Wait a minute! Did I just watch a sequel to “Paradise Lost”?
Richard "Milton-Gerwig" B
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