Movie review 'Big Eyes': Tim Burton’s unusual film
Big Eyes is a biopic of painter Margaret D.H. Keane
By : sudarshan ramani
Update: 2015-01-10 03:18 GMT
Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3 stars
Big Eyes is a biopic of painter Margaret D.H. Keane (Amy Adams), famous for her motif of subjects, usually young children with large eyes. At the end of the 1950s, she leaves her husband and moves to San Francisco along with her daughter. A fellow painter named Walter Keane (Christoph Waitz) notices her distinctive style. Burdened by the pressures of being a single mother, Margaret marries Walter mostly for convenience.
Meanwhile, Walter comes up with several schemes to sell his paintings but discovers that people only buy Margaret’s paintings and he eventually convinces buyers that the paintings are his. Margaret reluctantly accepts the arrangement when she sees how much revenue is pouring in, silencing her doubts and misgivings for the sake of her daughter and career.
Big Eyes is an unusual film, as can be expected from Tim Burton. Despite being a story based on a real-life incident, mixed with some aspects of a social problem film, the movie’s visual style and theme is lush and vibrant. It portrays a world of cool places like San Francisco, impeccable period décor of the 60s and bright sunshine. Its style is known among critics as “Americana”, the landscape of American icons and clichés reinforced over the years in several TV shows, cartoons and comics suburban houses with manicured gardens, friendly neighbours and bright summers with its blinding colours of blues and greens.
It’s a terrain other filmmakers like David Lynch have tackled in films like Blue Velvet or Sam Mendes in American Beauty. The genre addres-ses the clash of the myth of America as a land where anyone can change and where anything is possible against the reality of actual struggle for wealth and success. We also see this reflected in the clash between the two artists, Margaret, an American artist who takes everyday subjects from her life, versus Walter who yearns in reflected glory for European High Culture, fame and celebrity.
The film has a wonderful cast. Amy Adams gives a brave performance deser-ving of an Oscar nomination. It portrays the reality of a woman in a difficult situation without sentimentalising her situation or reducing her to a victim, while also playing her with a great deal of wit and charm. Christoph Waltz as an actor seems to be frozen in a set bag of readymade tics since Quentin Tarantino discovered him, but that actually fits the self-deceiving character Walter Keane, who bases himself on a set of clichés which he picks up from the culture around him.
When Waltz finally gives us a look at the real Keane, it is truly menacing and disturbing, it shows us how people of this kind can operate and function as effectively they do for so long.