Big Eyes
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Jon Polito
Biography/Drama - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Dec 2014
Written by: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Jon Polito
Biography/Drama - 105 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 19 Dec 2014
Tim Burton directed this? You can usually determine straight away if Tim Burton had his hands on a film: Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride. Nothing about Big Eyes shows a familiar Burton imprint, maybe some idyllic shots showing us 1958 which are reminiscent of his quaint opening town shots from Edward Scissorhands. This ‘based on a true story’ stranger-than-fiction tale should be a lengthy New Yorker article, not an uncomfortable feature film wasting the talents of a director many people patiently wait to make his next film. A warning to Tim Burton fans, this is not a quirky, macabre, nor gothic film; it’s not even Big Fish. Big Eyes sucks all the life out of its talented cast, its cult-followed director, and should be avoided by all prone to disappointment in great artists who stumble into a mistake.
I could neither identify with nor root for a single character in Big Eyes, which effectively kept me on the other side of the Metro platform of it. Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz, 2014's Horrible Bosses 2) is far too manic and obnoxious to sidle up to, even as an anti-hero. His wife, Margaret Keane (Amy Adams, 2013's American Hustle), spends so much time agonizing and fretting about what she has done and must continue to do, I thought Big Eyes was close to two and half hours long when the credits started to roll instead of being just over an hour and a half.
I could neither identify with nor root for a single character in Big Eyes, which effectively kept me on the other side of the Metro platform of it. Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz, 2014's Horrible Bosses 2) is far too manic and obnoxious to sidle up to, even as an anti-hero. His wife, Margaret Keane (Amy Adams, 2013's American Hustle), spends so much time agonizing and fretting about what she has done and must continue to do, I thought Big Eyes was close to two and half hours long when the credits started to roll instead of being just over an hour and a half.
Margaret paints canvases displaying young children with abnormally large, circular eyeballs. She explains you can see their souls through them. They frequently appear forlorn and some even have tears on their cheeks. Enter Walter who tries to make a couple bucks on the side by selling them. Swept away in the slight hysteria whipped up by the impact the paintings make in the San Francisco art scene, Walter claims credit for the paintings. His rationale? He can sell them more effectively if the public perceives him as the auteur. The art buying public does not buy ‘lady art’. Blank stares meet Margaret's Georgia O’Keefe retort.
Helping Walter publicize the new must have art of the season is newspaper gossip columnist Dick Nolan (Danny Huston, 2012's Hitchcock) who also acts as the film’s narrator. Why on Earth is this guy the narrator? He only has a tangential connection to the lead characters, mostly exclaims how odd the whole situation is when he is allowed some voiceover time during transitions in the film’s setting or time, and in an unusual move, he is not omniscient. He has no idea what Margaret’s motivations or excuses are; he can only guess right along with us.
Why does Margaret go along with the fraud so long even though she is obviously buckling under the pressure? Her afternoon cocktails noticeably become far stronger as the years pass by. Walter is a creep and Margaret repeatedly exposes lie after lie. Does one's gender determine the understanding and enjoyment of Big Eyes? The lady I screened Big Eyes with said she understood Margaret and sympathized with her about how easy it was for women to be so callously dominated by men in the Mad Men era of the late-‘50s/early ‘60s. Wait a minute. The movie’s first scene is Margaret packing up the car and speeding away from a disastrous first marriage. She has already fled one bad guy; she can’t up and leave the second one all of a sudden?
Writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are no strangers to covering real life oddball characters; they also wrote The People vs. Larry Flynt and Ed Wood. Those gentlemen, Flynt and Wood, had causes though. Margaret and Walter Keane have no cause other than financial and later on, a bizarre courtroom mockery. Alexander and Karaszewski claim Margaret was on the leading edge of and is a metaphor for the Women’s Movement explosion soon to occur after the events in the film. She does not come across this way. It is either their muddled script or Burton’s nebulous direction earning such little sympathy and understanding for Margaret’s plight. If Margaret symbolizes the Women’s Movement, this social phenomenon would not have occurred until the 1990s and then been ignored by anyone looking for an authentic declaration of rights.
What is Big Eyes? It is not a comedy for there are no laughs. It is not a drama because there are only a couple feelings lying around when Margaret sinks into despair. Is it gradual emotional torture projected from Walter onto Margaret? I suspect the only emotional torture in the room is the audience sitting through the film. Let's all try and pretend Big Eyes never happened.
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