UNDERSTANDING SCREENWRITING: Barbieheimer!

This one surprised the hell out of me.

Oppenheimer (2023. Written for the screen by Christopher Nolan. Based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. 180 minutes)

I was not particularly looking forward to Oppenheimer. First of all, it is one of the big summer releases. By big, I mean it runs three freaking hours. Although Lawrence of Arabia (1962) at 3 hours and 38 minutes is one of my favorite movies, I find a lot of movies, especially these days, way too long. Both the new Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible would have been helped by whacking several minutes off them. All right, a lot of minutes off them.

Then there is the fact it is a Christopher Nolan movie. While I liked his first feature Memento (2002) I have not been crazy about most of them since, as you can tell from some of my reviews here, here, and here. A major problem with them, which I mention more than once, is the writing of the characters and direction of the actors. The characters tend to be very flat and bland, in spite of the wonderful actors he gets. Nolan recognized the problem and in several interviews over the years he has made comments that he is trying to develop the characters and the emotional lines in the story. Until now he has not.

In Memento he established he was going to play with time. In my review of Inception (2010, the first of the three referenced above) I pointed out that he was time jumping the way Federico Fellini and Alain Resnais did in the olden days of the 1960s, but did not do it as well, so we got thoroughly confused. The same thing happened in Tenet (2020, the third I referenced above), where he was constantly changing where we were when. As I mentioned in that review, sometimes we were clear, sometimes we were not.

Given the problems that I have had with Nolan’s scripts, often co-written with his brother Jonathan, who wrote the story for Memento, I found Nolan’s directorial excesses, well, excessive. Yes, the city that folds in on itself in Inception is dazzling, but you get the point quickly and are ready to move on. The fight with everybody bouncing off all the walls and ceilings is fun, but I kept thinking how much more fun Fred Astaire’s version is in Royal Wedding (1951).

So what happens in Oppenheimer? Everything that has gone wrong with Nolan’s films before is now going right. How the hell did that happen?

My guess is that the difference is that this time Nolan is writing and directing a story based on facts and real people. All his previous films, including the Dark Knight films, are fictional stories, which means that in the writing (and the direction) you can take them any way you want. In Oppenheimer, he is adapting a massive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It is a story with a gallery of fascinating characters. That clearly helps Nolan focus on the characters the book gives him, and he seems to want to give each character his due, which he does. I will talk about this as we get into the film.

At the same time, the material gives Nolan a chance to show off his razzle-dazzle skills. The film begins with several abstract images. In the past, Nolan has just used them to show off. Here we begin to realize that these images are the kinds of things that may be floating around in Oppenheimer’s mind. Here is an interesting twist: we get a bunch of these at the beginning of the film, but then fewer as we get into the storylines and the characters. Nolan’s restraint on his tendencies is impressive here.

I have not read the book, but my guess is that is told in a more chronological way. Nolan does not tell the story that way. When I wrote about Inception (see above) I mentioned that while Nolan was jumping around in time like Fellini and Resnais, he was not making it as clear as those two had. Well, this time he does. Boy does he ever.

There are two major timelines in Oppenheimer and some minor ones. One major one is in the early to mid-forties when Oppenheimer is in charge of building the first atomic bomb. The other one is in the post-war world when Lewis Strauss, a politician whom Oppenheimer offended by making a fool of him in a public hearing, is determined to see that Oppenheimer’s security clearance is revoked. We see the incident that sticks in Strauss’s mind. It does not seem at the time to be that important, but Nolan keeps coming back, not to the incident, but to Strauss’s growing resentment.

One of the minor timelines, which we see mostly in the first hour of the movie, is the younger Oppenheimer as a student and professor, which introduces us to several well-known scientists, such as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, who show up later in the film. These scenes help establish Oppenheimer as a scientific genius. They also establish him as an egotist and a pain in the ass to real people.

Nolan has written an incredibly rich and complex character, which Oppenheimer was. His choice to play the part was Cillian Murphy, whose 6^th Nolan film this is. Nolan obviously saw all the qualities Murphy could bring to the part. When I saw the trailers for the film, I was not that impressed with Murphy, since there only seemed to be moments in his performance. When you see the performance in the film, Murphy and Nolan connect the dots. You do not get better film acting than this.

The supporting cast is equally impressive. As we move along in the first two hours toward the building of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer has to deal with the down-to-earth Army General Leslie Groves. Groves and Oppenheimer are frequently at odds, but always with mutual respect. Groves is played by Matt Damon (who, for the record, weighs only about a third of what the real Groves weighed), whose counterpoint with Murphy is a beautiful example of team acting.

Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, is played by Emily Blunt in a darker tone than she usually uses. Oppenheimer’s mistress (I told you Oppenheimer was a complex character), Jean, is played by Florence Pugh as, not surprisingly, the opposite of Kitty.

So for the first hour, we are introduced to Oppenheimer and his world, and in the second hour, we watch him involved in building the bomb. One thing that Nolan manages to keep clear for the audience of non-scientists is what the hell is going on. You get just enough to have some understanding what is happening. There are a lot of movies about science - and I am not even talking about sci-fi movies - that do not manage to do that. I think this is one of the many reasons the film has been so successful with audiences - it does not treat the audience like idiots.

The big set-piece is of course the build-up to and the explosion of the first atomic bomb and Nolan gives it its due.

And then people are surprised the film goes on for another hour. We do not see any atrocity footage of the attacks on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, although we do see Oppenheimer watching some footage. That’s an interesting choice on Nolan’s part. If he had included the atrocity footage, it might have upset the balance of the film. A younger Nolan might have included it, but this year’s Nolan has a sense of what this film needs and what it does not need.

So what holds us in the third hour is, in the fewest words possible, Robert Downey Jr. He is playing Lewis Strauss. We have seen him get grumpy about Oppenheimer, but now we begin to see how much he hates him. I mean, really hates him. It is Downey’s finest performance and helps hold the last hour of the picture together.

The Strauss storyline also reveals the excesses of American bureaucracies and the anti-communist movement in the late forties. It also shows us how quickly fame can change in America.

It is not a simple movie, in any way.

What is it in the air?

Barbie (2023. Written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach. 114 minutes)

Greta Gerwig, who also directs (Noah Baumbach is her long-time collaborator), started her career as an actress in very low-budget films in the “mumblecore” genre. She co-wrote and sometimes co-directed some of the films. She also popped up in more mainstream films like Woody Allen’s 2012 To Rome With Love.

In 2017 she wrote and directed Lady Bird, which attracted critical acclaim. It was a semi-autobiographical piece about her teen years in Sacramento. It was simple, muted, with no flash whatsoever. Similar in tone was her 2019 version of Little Women, but Gerwig told the story not in a straight-ahead way, but jumping back and forth in time. You can read my review of that one here. I found it very confusing for reasons you can see in my review. Gerwig was much better at the basic scenes and in her handling of the characters.

So what in the world convinced Mattel to turn over the jewel in their crown to Gerwig? And how did Gerwig convince them to let her do her vision of Barbie? There must have been something in the air, the same sort of something that let Universal agree to Nolan’s three-hour Oppenheimer. In both cases, the filmmakers have gone way beyond what they had done before, and if the studio heads ever stop trying to starve writers and let them get back to work, the studio heads should learn the lesson of the people who OK’d the production of these two movies.

(A side note: Mattel was already open to unusual ideas for a Barbie movie. At one point Diablo Cody wrote a version that was darker than what Gerwig did. I would love to read Cody’s version.)

So how do we find out that we are not in Gerwig’s Little Women world? On the one hand, we do start with a bunch of small girls playing with conventional baby dolls. But they are out in a desert. And the music is familiar. And then a very well-known piece of music, which introduces not a black slab, but a giant Barbie in her black and white swimsuit. The small girls then start to smash their baby dolls, tossing bits and pieces of them up in the air.

OK, but it is not just a one-joke rip-off of a familiar Kubrick movie. It is, like the rest of the movie, not simply collections of jokes. I did not laugh as much as I expected to in the film because I was busy thinking about all the nuances that the dialogue and action bring into the film. Oppenheimer was not the only not-simple movie sucking in the big bucks this summer.

Now we are in Barbieland (beautifully designed), where everything is perfect for the women, who are all named Barbie. The guys, nearly all named Ken, are just, well, accessories. The Barbies run everything. Gerwig gives us enough defining detail quickly enough so we know exactly where we are.

Then the unthinkable happens. Barbie wakes up with…flat feet. We have had enough of her traditional arches that we understand what a disaster it is. How can this happen in a world where everything is perfect for Barbie?

Well, Gerwig has an answer for us: someone who owns a Barbie in the real world has done something terrible to her Barbie. What is to be done? Barbie goes to Weird Barbie, who knows all about the dark side of everything. Weird Barbie is played a perfectly cast Kate McKinnon. She tells Barbie she has to go to the Real World, find the kid who has that doll, and get her to OK putting her back to normal (I think; sometimes the exposition goes by very fast; Gerwig is not fooling around).

So off Barbie goes in her pink car and who pops up in the backseat but her Ken, who has been feeling ignored. And we are glad to see him. A word here on the casting of the entire film. It is flawless. OK, more than one word. Margot Robbie is not only Barbie, but is one of the producers of the film. 

According to one of the many rumors floating around the Internet, Robbie at one point wanted to get the once and future Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot, to play the lead. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and Robbie played Barbie. Gadot simply does not have the charismatic sparkle that Robbie does. Boy, does she hold the screen. “Her” Ken is played by Ryan Gosling, who brings his own wit and sparkle to the part. He and Robbie are a great team, working together and not trying to upstage each other. The other Barbies are played by a variety of actresses. Their characters are all named Barbie, but if you look at the photographs of them on the main IMDb page for the film here, you will notice that there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences, which I think is one of Gerwig’s sly comments on the assumption that all Barbies are alike.

So Barbie and Ken arrive in the real world. Well, California’s Venice Beach, Santa Monica, and Century City. I saw the film in Century City, and the audience got some chuckles recognizing buildings they had walked by to get to the theatre.

The real world, needless to say, is a shock to Barbie. Construction workers, all men, say rude things to her. The real people on Venice Beach (well, as real as people on Venice Beach ever get) laugh at how Barbie and Ken are dressed. A nice note: the women laugh at Barbie as much as the men do.

Ken is fascinated by a world in which men are in charge and he spends some time trying to learn why and how. Watch him go into a hospital and try to get a job as a doctor simply because he is a guy. He also becomes obsessed with…horses, and look how Gerwig develops that.

Barbie meanwhile finds the girl, Sasha, who supposedly owns the doll equivalent of Barbie. Sasha hates Barbies and everything about them. She threw out her collection years ago. Well, that’s a big help, isn’t it? Don’t give up hope.

Sasha’s mom, Gloria (another great performance, this one by America Ferrara) works at Mattel (the office satire is not quite as fresh as it could be) and when Sasha wanted to throw out her Barbies, Gloria saved…you guessed it. Gloria gets a great aria, beautifully played by Ferrara, about how in the real world women have to be everything, all the time. The audience I saw the film with, mostly women, were I think so stunned by the truth of the speech they did not applaud at the end. I suspect other audiences may have.

So Barbie returns to Barbieland, sadder but wiser. And no, I don’t remember if she gets her feet re-arched. What she finds is that Ken, who got back before she did, has turned Barbieland into a patriarchal paradise; pay attention to how the look of Barbieland has changed. The men are even planning a vote that would make it illegal for a woman to be elected president. The women outsmart them by getting the men to fight amongst themselves, forgetting to vote.

Barbie has a conversation with an older woman Ruth whom she met at Mattel, about who she, Barbie, can be now. I won’t tell you any more because you really have to hear it yourself.

I would have thought they would have ended the film on that scene, but they don’t. Instead, we get a later scene where Gloria and Sasha are driving Barbie to what we assume is her new job. Instead, we get one of the best closing punch lines in the last few decades. It works because it has been beautifully prepared for with a lot of little references that you will think are just jokes/observations that the film is full of. Nope, Gerwig the writer (and director) is sharper than that.

As you might expect, the bigger a hit at the box office Barbie became, the more the misogynist Internet trolls jumped all over it. They were appalled at not only what a feminist movie it is, but that it made fun of men and their wretched excess. I am sure many of these trolls were the same ones that were complaining last year that the presence of Margot Robbie in Amsterdam and Babylon was the reason both films bombed at the box office.

Barbie, produced and starring Margot Robbie, has grossed more than one billion dollars worldwide. So far.

Randall Park, the actor (not in Barbie) has been quoted on the Internet that he is afraid Hollywood will learn the wrong lesson from the success of the film and make more movies about toys. Instead, they should learn to make more movies about…women. Here, here.

Since this is a column about screenwriting I should mention that people are making a big deal that this is the first film directed by a woman that has made a billion dollars.

The same woman who wrote the script.