05. movie analysis
--- movie analysis.
for this movie analysis, i felt that there was really only one correct choice. and that, of course, was...
i noticed that the movie had a pretty good range of shots, used to show both the setting and certain messages or emotions that the director wanted to convey.
the beginning of the movie uses higher angles to establish the setting, Barbie land. the aerial shot at the beginning, for example, gives us a view of Barbie land in its entirety, highlighting just how surreal the country was meant to be. everything is pink and in its own little bubble. it also pushes the point that EVERYTHING is about barbie, setting up part of the movie's conflict in a subtle way, foreshadowing it, as we see that even the roads spell out "Barbie Land".
one of the shots that was most memorable to me was the extreme closeup of barbie's eye. as i've said before, i am an avid enjoyer of these kinds of shots, solely because i feel like they reveal so much emotion and really humanize the subject, but the context in which this shot was used made it all the better. as a plastic doll living in a pink utopia, barbie isn't supposed to be feeling anything other than joy. it's the catalyst of the movie's plot, that she starts having that sweet sweet existential dread and negative feelings that come with being alive.
so having an extreme closeup of her shedding a tear once she travels to the real world and actually sees emotions in action, it shows how barbie is changing, emphasizes that she's no longer just a doll now. for that reason, i think the director used the camera angle very well in this shot.
the movie also only ever uses angles that are from the front, back, or sides. Simple, easy angles that show as much as possible on screen and don't hide anything from its viewer. to me, this really stuck out as mimicking the feeling of playing with dolls. you can only really play with dolls in the same way the camera angles tend to be, holding them from behind, from the front, or from the sides. in fact, many of the times that we see barbie, the shot feels as though we are the ones controlling her. a couple of examples that really solidified this feeling for me are when she's in the car, or when barbie and ken are traveling to the real world. while the camera could've very easily just been focusing on barbie, the director specifically chose to have very wide shots in order to show off that doll-like feeling to the world.
