This One Character in ‘Barbie’ Encapsulates the Themes of the Film
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is undeniably the film that dominated 2023 (sorry Oppenheimer), raking in nearly $1.5 billion at the box office and earning universal critical acclaim. As Barbie hits awards season, you can expect the film to start scooping up trophies left and right.
Now that Barbie is officially streaming on Max this weekend, fans are diving deeper into everything the movie has to offer. There’s one scene, however, that has caused a lot of conversation. After Barbie (Margot Robbie) faces the cruelty of the real world, she stops to cry on a bench. She sits next to an old woman and takes her in. Everyone in Barbieland is young, but Barbie sees the beauty in this woman. She tells her she’s beautiful, and the old woman replies, “I know it!”.
Who is the old woman?
Contrary to popular belief, the old woman is NOT Ruth Handler, the inventor of the Barbie doll. The woman is played by acclaimed costume designer Ann Roth. A close friend of Gerwig, Roth has won two Academy Awards for Costume Design for her work on The English Patient and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Her work over the decades has included beloved films like Klute, Midnight Cowboy, 9 to 5, Heartburn, The Birdcage, and Mamma Mia! She has also worked on three of Noah Baumbach’s films. Baumbach is a celebrated director and co-wrote the Barbie script with his partner Gerwig.
What does she represent in the film?
Roth’s character is thematically crucial to the movie, as she represents the complexity of being human. As Barbie struggles through her existential crisis, she sees in Roth something she’s never seen in all of Barbieland. A woman who has lived a full and realized life, with the age and experience that comes with it.
Gerwig explained the importance of the scene in an interview on the Kermode & Mayo’s Take podcast, saying:
“Barbie’s sort of looking around at the world and then looks at her and takes her in, and she’s never seen aging before, and she’s struck by her, and she says, “You’re so beautiful,” and Ann, as this woman says, “I know it.” It’s such a wonderful moment because A) Ann is fabulous and B) it’s just this kind of connection through time and I think one thing I’m always interested in as a filmmaker is women talking to each other through generations. I think that’s fascinating to me and it’s this first glimmer of humanity with idealization of this is the ideal way that someone looks or is.”
She continued, ”Even with optimization, like ‘We’re gonna make you better stronger faster.’ There’s this hysteria around maximizing everything and I think sometimes the part where you age or things break down isn’t without its own beauty. I always think of the paintings that Monet made when his sight was going and they’re unbelievably beautiful, so I don’t know that everything always has to be optimized.”
Gerwig faced some resistance from producers about including the scene in the film. She told Rolling Stone, “I love that scene so much, … It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, ‘Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.’ And I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.’” She later described the scene as the “heart of the film.”
(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
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