Directed by: Tim Burton.
Written by: Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski.
Starring: Amy Adams (Margaret Keane), Christoph Waltz (Walter Keane), Krysten Ritter (DeeAnn), Jason Schwartzman (Ruben), Danny Huston (Dick Nolan), Terence Stamp (John Canaday), Jon Polito (Enrico Banducci), Elisabetta Fantone (Marta), James Saito (Judge), Delaney Raye (Young Jane), Madeleine Arthur (Older Jane).
Tim Burton’s best film,
to me anyway, has always been 1994’s Ed Wood. That film was Burton’s portrait
of the “worst director in cinema history” – a man who made Z-grade sci-fi, horror
and melodrama movies during the 1950s. Wood had all the passion of a true
artist, but none of the talent. But Burton loved Wood just the same – and his
portrait of him was extremely sympathetic, and in many ways help to
rehabilitate his reputation. Burton was still in the first decade of his
directing career when he made Ed Wood – and was at the height of his powers.
Around that same time he made two great Batman films (in particular Batman
Returns) as well as Edward Scissorhands. His films were always visually
distinctive, but with a few exceptions, they were also somewhat hollow – great
to look at, but without much underneath. In the two decades since Ed Wood, that
has just become more and truer of Burton’s work. He has had a few triumphs
since Ed Wood – Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(2005) chief among them. But more and more it seems that as an artist, Burton
doesn’t really have all that much to say – and since he has continued to repeat
his macabre visual style in film after film, even that has somewhat worn thin.
Personally, I think he should do more animation – his best film in recent years
was Frankenweenie (2012), which indulged all of Burton’s obsessions, and
allowed him to mine some nostalgia at the same time. But while there are things
to admire about all of his recent films, they have increasingly become emptier
and more soulless than before.
Perhaps that is what
drew him to the story of Margaret Keane that he tells in Big Eyes – and why he
choose to collaborate with his Ed Wood screenwriters, Scott Alexander and Larry
Karaszewski, yet again. There is a little bit of Wood in Keane – whose
paintings were critically despised at the time, and haven’t been rediscovered
as anything other than kitsch in the decades since. But at the height of their
popularity, they sold a hell of a lot paintings and posters and post cards,
etc. of young girls with haunted and huge eyes. Some have interrupted Big Eyes
as Burton’s statement in his own defense – the movie does after all quote Andy
Warhol on Keane – that he loves it, and they have to be good. If they weren’t,
why would millions of people love them so much?
Big Eyes tells a very
bizarre story. It starts with Margaret fleeing one horrible marriage, her
daughter in tow, and moving to San Francisco, where she immediately gets
herself into another horrible marriage. When she first meets Walter Keane
(Christoph Waltz) – he seems to be perfect. Another artist, like herself, but
he also has a steady job making good money, while he tries to get his art
career off the ground. They marry quickly, and he tries to sell both his and
her art – and is amazed when her art starts to sell like hotcakes. Walter was a
genius in some ways – a great salesman, he knows how to play the media, and sell
himself as an artist, even if he isn’t one. Knowing that people like the meet
the artist, he pretends that he painted all those waifs with the big eyes – and
she goes along with it, in part because she’s too scared to do anything else.
Besides, she is shy, and Walter isn’t. Their empire grows and grows, and she
starts to be tormented by all the lies they are telling. And things start to
fall apart – eventually culminating in a bizarre trail, where Margaret sues her
now ex-husband Walter for slander for continuing the lie that he is the real
artist.
There is a story,
buried, here somewhere that Burton and his screenwriters only hint at. That is
about what the meaning of being an artist really is. Margaret is an artist –
she paints to express herself, and knows why she does it. Whether you think she is a good artist, or a hack,
like many did, is really up to you – but Margaret is an artist, and her art is
personal to her. There are a few moments where it seems like Burton is going to
push this story somewhere deeper – a surreal scene in a grocery store for
instance, but then he backs off – too in love with the bizarre story to dig
past its surface.
Part of
the problem is the performances by Adams and Waltz – which are both fine on
their own, but don’t fit together at all. Adams plays Margaret quietly and
subtly – although there are hints that she is more bizarre than the movie makes
her. Waltz goes wildly, crazily over the top as Walter. Both performances are
fine – but they belong in different movies.
So once again, we are stuck with the surface of a Burton movie to derive pleasure from. The film doesn’t have the same dark, macabre look that many Burton films do – instead favoring the brightly colored, phony happiness of the 1950s. The film does, for the most part, look great – although Burton indulges himself a little too much at times (a bizarre confrontation between Walter and a New York Times art critic, played by Terrence Stamp, for instance). The surface of the movie is all studied artifice, and unfortunately Burton doesn’t push far enough to see behind that surface. So, in general, it’s another Tim Burton movie – a wonderful surface, masking emptiness. What makes this more disappointing than other Burton movies is that the elements for something more are there – Burton doesn’t seem very interested in exploring them however.
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