The most commercially successful film of last year, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, may have attracted attention for its inimitable mixture of pop feminism and outrageously catchy songs, but there is another factor, hidden in plain sight from the very first trailer, which is just as significant, if entirely unexpected: that a film supposedly dedicated to celebrating female emancipation was wholly in thrall to one of the 20th century’s most male – if not masculine – filmmakers, Stanley Kubrick. The picture begins with a shot-for-shot homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and goes on to allude to the likes of The Shining and Dr Strangelove. Perhaps it should have been entitled Barbie: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Stanley Kubrick.
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