Ken positioned as subversive center of ‘Barbie’
Gosling displayed willingness to be tough, tender in film performance
When Ryan Gosling first got the screenplay to “Barbie,” the title page read “Barbie and Ken” with the “and Ken” crossed out.
It was the first sign that this particular script — co-written by the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, working with her life partner and frequent collaborator, Noah Baumbach — would be full of untamed wit.
“It just was like nothing I ever could have expected,” Gosling says. “Greta so brilliantly constructed it almost like an amusement park where you need no map. It’s just been designed so that you naturally ride the rides that she wants you to ride.”
In the world of the film, now in theaters, there is “Barbie Land,” where the perfectly blond and beautiful Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives a frictionless, uncomplicated life marked by days at the beach and nighttime dance parties with her friends. More Barbies (Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Emma Mackey and Alexandra Shipp, among others) are the president, lawyers, doctors and prize-winning authors. As Helen Mirren’s narrator intones, “All problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved.”
That is until Robbie’s Barbie suddenly begins to have recurring thoughts of death and cellulite. Her boyfriend, Ken (Gosling), already lives a life marked by insecurity and anxiety, only at ease when he has Barbie’s attention.
When Barbie decides to venture to the Real World in an attempt to solve her newfound problems, Ken tags along. There he learns
about the patriarchy — and that he loves it — bringing those ideas back to Barbie Land to rechristen it his “Ken-dom” and refashioning Barbie’s Dreamhouse into his “mojo dojo casa house.”
And still, all he wants is for her to notice him. (It’s a sweet kind of rebellion.)
So although the movie is definitely called “Barbie,” it is Ken who unexpectedly provides its emotional center, with Gosling’s performance arguably among the most rounded, poignant and plain greatest of his career.
As Ken. In the “Barbie” movie.
Gerwig says: “There was something really early when Noah and I were working on it —
Ken as an accessory and how forgotten he is — we just felt, psychologically: That’s going to be the story. There’s (a) story there. How could there not be?”
Gerwig and Baumbach did extensive research into the history of Barbie, including such discontinued characters as Barbie’s
pregnant friend Midge and Earring Magic Ken.
They took the work of creating the wildly stylized world of the movie quite seriously, and as Ken emerged, it became clear that portraying him would require a unique set of skills. Not just good looks, but also a comedic agility and a dramatic gravity that can be hard to find in a single performer.
“I didn’t know Ryan at all,” Gerwig says, “but Ryan was the person who was always in my mind going to play this role. I just knew he could be really funny but also would mine the depths of this kind of outrageous conundrum that Ken finds himself in, as a person.”
Gosling, who as a child performer appeared on the 1990s revival of “The Mickey Mouse Club,” has become one of the most charmingly enigmatic actors in Hollywood, with the leading-man looks of classic stars but an offbeat charisma distinctly his own.
A two-time best actor Oscar nominee for “Half
Nelson” and “La La Land,” Gosling has studiously avoided the superhero and franchise parts that have bogged down so many of his contemporaries, opting instead for unpredictable roles in films such as “The Notebook,” “Drive,” “The Nice Guys,” “Blade Runner 2049” and “First Man.” A through line in his work is that, for all of his brooding intensity, there’s often a lightness underneath.
“It was the gravitas he’s able to bring as an actor that was part of what made everything so heartfelt — but also so funny,” Gerwig says.
A stylized “dream ballet” dance number is tucked inside the extended musical performance that is the power ballad “I’m Just Ken,” a showstopping highlight sung by Gosling and written by Oscar winners Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt.
The dance number has its basis in the 1950s Gene Kelly musicals “Singin’ in the Rain” and “An American in Paris.” And while the extended interlude
was not in the original script presented to Gosling, Gerwig said she “babystepped” everyone involved toward the idea, which to her seemed an obvious if oddball decision.
“I do remember everyone, including Noah, was like, ‘What is this dream ballet you want?’ ” Gerwig says. “And I was like, It’s going to be great. I just felt like it was just right there. It was exactly what the moment wanted to be.”
There had been rehearsals for Gosling to dance in a Sylvester Stallonein-the-1980s-style, fulllength mink coat that Ken wears once he becomes obsessed with men’s rights, so Gosling wasn’t thrown by the addition of an even more elaborate dance number just before shooting began.
“It felt so organic, as this whole process has,” Gosling says. “We were talking a lot about just being kids and coming from that place in a lot of these scenes. And when I was a kid, I was working, and I was dancing at the mall or singing at weddings.
“And I thought, you know, that kid worked really hard and got me here. I owe everything to him, but I thought I had let him retire. Like, he’d worked enough, and I could take it from here. But it was time to pull him out of retirement one more time for one last heist.”
While it might be expected that a “Barbie” movie would be inspirational for women and young girls, the screenplay’s storyline for Ken — falling into toxic masculinity and coming out the other side to a place of mutual appreciation — makes it a potential crossover for boys and men.
“He was freeing masculinity for everyone on set in this extraordinary way,” Gerwig says of Gosling’s performance, marked by a willingness to be both tough and tender. “And these men loved it. I think they felt released by Ken’s journey.”
During production, Gerwig began to notice male crew members suddenly wearing pink socks or humming the tune of “I’m Just Ken.” Gosling recalled walking behind a crew member who added his own name, changing the lyric to “I’m Just Chad.” Crew members also made their own shirts, pink with rainbow fringe on the sleeves, that many wore during the final days of production.
“Life is hard for everybody,” said Gerwig. “I think equally men have held themselves to just outrageous standards that no one can meet. And they have their own set of contradictions where they’re walking a tightrope. I think that’s something that’s universal. Just as much as women have been lost in some morass of how to do everything. I equally see that as true for men. For everybody. We equally beat ourselves up.”