Dazed and confused

I walked into my local cinema on Sunday night and bought two tickets to see Oppenheimer, plus two tickets to see Barbie.

Fortunately I wasn’t watching them back to back.

Sunday was Oppenheimer with the eldest, while the Barbie tickets were a pre purchase for Monday night with my sister.

The eldest had previously said he was up for seeing Barbie, but eventually confessed Oppenheimer was more his speed.

Cue a double movie fest for someone who usually only gets to the cinema once a year.

The cinema complex was heaving with people on Sunday night as it was also showing Indiana Jones.

Talk about a winning trifecta – happy days for the industry.

Oppenheimer will stay with me for a long time, despite the fact I had trouble following the storyline as it jumped across the decades, the soundtrack being way too loud, the dialogue being a bit muffled at times, the movie being three hours long and there being so many characters that I had trouble keeping up.

I’m pretty clear on who Oppenheimer was but I’m a bit hazy on all the other scientists other than Albert Einstein.

And while Robert Downey Jr was great in it, I am not entirely sure who he was playing other than someone in politics who was way too self-obsessed.

In case you’re not aware of the storyline, it focuses on Julius Robert Oppenheimer, who was an American theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. The Manhattan Project created the atomic bomb that decimated Hiroshima and Nagaski.

The eldest and I were very sombre as we exited the cinema, as while the film does not show what those terrible bombs did to the people in the two Japanese cities, it was still deeply unsettling to contemplate the horrors that humanity inflict on each other during wars.

Oppenheimer’s “it was the destruction we needed to have to stop the nuclear arms race” philosophy was thought provoking, but also very confronting. We both felt he was an unsympathetic character who was portrayed a little too kindly in the movie.

Then I headed to Barbie last night and I didn’t really need to pre-purchase my tickets because the cinema complex was virtually empty.

I’d like to think it’s because everyone was watching the Matildas match, which would be very appropriate given the subject matter.

Like Oppenheimer, I also found Barbie a bit confusing at times … Possibly because my phone was buzzing constantly during the first half due to the eldest having locked themselves out of the apartment.

He eventually had to walk to the cinema and ask one of the ushers to let them come to the door of cinema 2 so I could hand my keys over.

I was also bamboozled slightly by my sister telling me that Ryan Gosling singing “I’m Just Ken,” from the Barbie movie soundtrack, is on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Really? Bizarre!

But my sister and I laughed a lot during the movie, which was a nice change from the sombre feelings Oppenheimer inspired.

As for what it’s about, Barbie is part musical, part allegory on the patriarchal systems in society and part philosophical study of what it means to be human.

The very last scene for example had my sister and I talking up a storm as we exited the cinema.

And Mattel’s role in the film is really quite something. Smart, self-deprecating and also slightly insidious.

It blows my mind that $145 million was spent on the movie and $150 million on the marketing budget.

I wouldn’t have expected a movie about Barbie to get me thinking on so many levels, but it did.

It’s fascinating that two such extremely different movies have both made me so thoughtful.

Have you seen them? What did you think?

Song of the day: Ryan Gosling “Push”