ArteFact

Girls have always had dolls. These dolls were models of little girls. Playing with dolls, real girls would play at being mothers. That is, until Barbie: a doll that is simply a woman. In the opening scene of Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023), Barbie appears (as a ninety-foot-tall Margot Robbie) and we watch as all the little girls smash their girl dolls on the ground. Upon seeing this, I thought to myself: this is abortion, this is contraception, this is independent womanhood opposed to motherhood: this is life (independence, self-standing) against death (separation, motherhood, letting be, being fruitful in another).

Looking back is a notoriously tricky business. Memories can entrap us, or themselves become distorted in our attempts to curate the past. In many ways, Kazuo Ishiguro's oeuvre is a study of human memory—falsified, true and otherwise. Writer Michalina Ratajczak traces the theme as it is woven into three of his novels, including his most recent, The Buried Giant.

Two works written and directed by one of the most profound living film-makers were recently released within two years: The Tree of Life and To the Wonder...

I first became interested in the celebrated screenwriter Charlie Kaufman after watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind…