LIFE + CULTURE

The One About Barbie

It was a hit I didn’t see coming

Barbie is about missed opportunities in childhood, including mine in my own wilderness. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I took the liberty to watch ‘Oppenheimer’ on the day it was released. I exited the cinema feeling unimpressed with all the fuss: Christopher Nolan’s idiosyncratic narrative style using color versus black and white; the IMAX technology format; the history about the scientist and the nascent race to build the atomic bomb against the Germans and the Russians. Nothing new there, I thought.

The showcase was linear, and when the audience clapped as the credits rolled, I felt it was odd as the story ended at the point where Nagasaki and Hiroshima were decimated. Perhaps a moment of silence was more appropriate. We talk so much about lives being lost especially with the current Ukraine versus Russia crisis, yet here we are, failing to see we barely improved since even the First World War. I refused to clap for stupidity.

And in came ‘Barbie’.

“My darling, go watch it but please go with an open mind,” my best friend who is currently based in Europe gave me a gentle reminder via video call. “Throw logic out of the window, ignore the critics, just enjoy the movie for what it is. People have forgotten the art of doing something as simple as that.”