Review: Big Eyes All That It Appears?

Big Eyes

Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Madeleine Arthur
Director: Tim Burton
Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski

106 minutes     Rated M

I think I like Tim Burton, there is something about his style that is compelling. I think. There’s ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘Edward Scissorhands’, ‘Big Fish’ and ‘Ed Wood’, what’s not to like? Then I remember ‘Dark Shadows’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ and I remember. I guess not every gothic angst piece of kitsch maketh a good movie nor be a crowd pleaser which I suspect motivates Tim more often than not.

Big Eyes returns Tim Burton the personal story maker, the brilliant director who made ‘Ed Wood’ and I’m glad of that. Ironically it’s the story of a producer of crowd pleasing Kitsch which might even have a shade or two of the Gothic about it. Witness the tale of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), a San Francisco-based artist whose portraits of children with glistening, saucer-sized eyes were the in thing to own and turned out to be a gold mine for Margaret and her conman husband Walter (Christoph Waltz). She locked herself away painting for 16 hours a day browbeaten, maybe even in thrall to Walter who convinced her to churn out the popular waif paintings.  Not only that, BUT Walter took the credit for being the artist too. It’s a good story and an interesting one.

As with ‘Ed Wood’ Burton appears to posit the artistic success of the Keanes has more to do with the ‘peculiarity’ or notoriety of the art rather than the merit of it. Again of course the film itself might have to bear that petard for the oddness of the subject matter; the queerness of the story might deny it great commercial success. Maybe, too, in the current climate of a seeming increase in male disrespect and abuse towards women, a film about male dominance and female submissiveness albeit a half-century ago, it’s a hard sell.

Amy Adams as Margaret was a bit whiney at times but DID show us her reticent and compulsive natures. The whininess is an Adams motif though and something I would like to think will decrease as she gains more experience. She is a terrific actor but is still developing. A significant fault in the script about Margaret’s character is that we don’t know where the compulsiveness which drove her (compelled her?) to paint almost the same picture over and over for eight years. And was it simply a philosophy of ‘don’t mess with success’ that prevented her from standing up to Walter earlier to change the style from banal and unremittingly repetitive paintings of, mostly, women and children staring straight out with those huge black eyes?

Walter as played by Christoph Waltz was a charming and loathsome character. You despise the control he exudes and cringe at the winning smile, his exuberance is delightful while at the same time awful. BUT it is too often over the top and it’s in his scenes more often than not that the film slips, almost trips over itself. Also I did find essentially that Waltz was reminiscent of Woody Allen in the voice he chose, maybe that’s because Waltz still carries his Austrian accent off screen and Woody seemed to fit how he wanted his character to sound. I was not as comfortable with his acting as I was with most of the rest of the cast.

There are a couple of fine ‘cameo’ moments too. Jason Schwartzman is compelling and convincing as the doubting gallery owner while Terrance Stamp does a fine turn as the critic John Canaday who might have been a rad harsh when he suggested "It's synthetic hack work,” but onto something when he also called the works, “An infinity of kitsch.”  Danny Huston as columnist Dick Nolan does a fine turn when he appears on screen but the voiceover by Nolan is a bit naff and unnecessary.

San Francisco just before everyone was wearing ‘flowers in their hair’ looked fantastic and totally convincing thanks to the splendid photography of Bruno Delbonnel.

This is a film that mostly satisfies even though it is wholly disturbing, much like those paintings and much like the odd, quirky, manipulative and destructive relationship at the centre of the story.

I think this is the sort of film Burton does well but I suspect he’ll still make the oddball, sometimes creepy but sometimes clever stuff again. Some will be great and some will be ho hum but the main thing is that he is prepared to ‘have a go’.

I think.

3 ½ out of 4