Closer to Fine

Plastic fantastic.

Dear Reader

Did you survive the cultural event of the year, “Barbenheimer?” I did, but didn’t get the t-shirt to say so. I know it’s all a lot of hype, and there’s so much going on, including a writers/actors’ strike that needs to be urgently addressed. But I’ve been delighted to witness the excitement for both films, the packed cinemas and vibrant discourse around them (even if that discourse got a bit too much over in bluebird-land).

I saw Oppenheimer earlier in the week. It’s a technical marvel, for sure. I’d just prefer to talk about Barbie. Much has been said and written about Greta Gerwig’s film, but I’d like to share a small moment that made it a cinema-going experience I hadn’t had in a very long time. And that wasn’t just because in-my-head-bestie Beth (the wonderful Susan Kelechi Watson) from This Is Us was at my screening.

Sadly, Beth had opted to sit quite a few rows away from me, so when a woman wearing a gorgeous figure-hugging light pink pencil skirt and white blouse asked if the seat next to me was taken, I said it was wide open. “I asked my boss if I could leave work early,” she told me, as she settled in, and we chatted some more. It was 4:30 pm in Brooklyn. I, too, had asked to leave work early, but not for me; I’d asked my husband if he would be able to come home early to take over baby duty while I popped off to the cinema for one of the few not-sold-out screenings left.  

Going to the cinema or watching a film at home these days has become somewhat of a gamble for me, in terms of how it’ll affect me. Since having a baby, it’s as if all my emotions have become heightened, and I just feel everything so much more. My anxiety over the past few months, as my daughter grows and develops, has only increased too—with thoughts of how to keep her safe and protected while not suffocating or stifling her constantly on my mind.

I’ve found these feelings often tend to surface, unsuspectingly, while watching a movie. Yes, I shudder at news headlines even more so now. But it’s when I’m settled in for a film, my defenses seemingly completely lowered, that it happens; something on screen stirs up deep emotions that sometimes overcome me.

It happened during the Barbie movie. I wasn’t really expecting it to happen during the Barbie movie. The film is a love letter to being an independent woman, to freedom, to equality and perseverance and asserting one’s own identity. And to, of course, the colour pink. Babies are relegated to the opening scene of the film, and discontinued pregnant Midge makes only two brief cameos. Indeed, Barbie, in all her iterations, has never actually come with a child.

But the film is also a love letter to mothers. (It probably shouldn’t have surprised me, given that Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, did so for her own daughter.) It’s about mothers, both new and not so, who juggle independence with caregiving; who try to reconcile shifts in identity; who bring life into this world knowing it can be full of wonder and joy, but also cruel and deeply unfair. Who strive to get over their own ideas of perfection so they can model the beauty of imperfection for their children.

At least, that’s what it felt like for me. And so, during one of the film’s stand-out scenes, I felt the tears coming, faster than I could wipe them away. I took a sharp breath. “It’s okay,” I heard the voice of the woman next to me say. “You got this. It’s getting me, too. You’re okay.”

What is it about an encounter with a stranger that it can be the thing you need at the time it’s most needed? A voice carrying a reminder of something you know, but you just need to hear it, often and in different ways and forms, until maybe one day it really sinks in.

Directors are strangers of a different kind; they can feel familiar, in the sense that sometimes they, too, know what you need to hear, just by virtue of the fact that it’s something they need to hear. Gerwig is a mother herself, and recently had another baby. While Barbie prodded at my anxiety, it also calmed it. (Just how, you’ll need to see it for yourself but it had a lot to do with wonderful words by an elderly Rhea Perlman and a montage of home footage.) In that darkened room, both the film and a fellow film-goer offered some comfort, a short respite, and a little nod to an everlasting maxim that often gets lost in amongst overwhelming thoughts.

“Thank you,” I whispered back—to the woman sitting next to me, and to the screen.

And thank you for reading.

Stay safe and well!

Your neighbour,

Nadia