No film was as successful as “Barbie” last year. Greta Gerwig’s gently feminist cinematic redefinition of the plastic doll grossed a total of $1.4 billion and could also have a say at the Oscars. Almost everyone has probably seen the film by now, even Martin Scorsese is thrilled.
All? Not quite. Werner Herzog, also revered in Hollywood as an exalted extreme director, only watched for 30 minutes and then switched off. He told TV presenter Piers Morgan on his show Piers Morgan: Uncensored.
“Are you in the ‘Barbie’ camp or the ‘Oppenheimer’ camp?” the British television presenter, known for his provocations, asked the German filmmaker.
“Barbie”: Hell and Back?
Herzog: I haven’t seen ‘Oppenheimer’ yet, but I’ve already managed to watch the first half hour of ‘Barbie’. I wanted to see him because I was curious. And I still don’t have a clear stance on it, but I do have a suspicion: Could it be that Barbie’s world is absolute hell? For one movie ticket, audiences can truly experience absolute hell up close.”
After all, the 81-year-old indicated that he would give “Barbie” another chance. “Give me a chance to watch it completely,” he said. However, Piers Morgan advised him against it and immediately responded to Herzog’s vision of hell: “Better spare yourself the horror,” he advised. “I’ve already seen the whole movie and it’s actually hell.”
However, the two are obviously talking past each other. While the director of “Fizzcaraldo” and other cinematic explorations of madness and human exceptionalism apparently sees the plastic world depicted in the first moments of “Barbie” as a realization of an underworld from which there appears to be no escape, Morgan sees it as emancipatory Approach of the film as an idea of hell that has become a film.
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