Review: BIG EYES

BIG EYES  (BIOPIC/COMEDY-DRAMA)

3 out of 4 stars
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Jon Polito, Madeleine Arthur, Delaney Raye
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language.
105 minutes
Verdict: Played safe, but ultimately a refreshing turn for director Tim Burton, BIG EYES is an interesting commentary on marriage, gender politics and art with a fun cast, and best of all, it proves that Burton can still make a good movie.
YOU MAY ENJOY BIG EYES IF YOU LIKED:
ED WOOD  (1994) 
BIG FISH  (2003)
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN  (2002)
FINDING NEVERLAND  (2004)
MAN ON THE MOON  (1999)
Behind every great man is a great woman, or so the saying says.  The stranger-than-fiction story of American artist Margaret Keane and her husband, Walter Keane, takes place in the so-called 'good old days", of the 1950s.  As put by a character in Tim Burton's new film recounting the Keanes' story, "The 1950s were a great time...if you were a man."  If you were a white man, more specifically.  It was a time when men were men, and women were domestics who cooked and cleaned in service the husband's household.  Women were expected to provide for their husbands, but only husbands got the credit of "provider"; marriage made two people into one and the same, but the identity belonged to the man.  Divorce was truly an anomaly, and while it's easy to look back at those times in contrast to our modern rate of 53% of marriages ending in divorce, that mindset overlooks how many people suffered in broken, sometime abusive marriages because of the social pressure to fit the mold.  It's tragic that two people who once professed their undying love to one another have reached with a failed marriage past repair, but it's less tragic than the victim of an abusive marriage who suffers in silence.
BIG EYES is the story of a peculiar case of marital abuse in a patriarchal society, opening just as Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) has left her first husband, with only her daughter and her paintings, and arrived in California at the behest of her longtime friend DeeAnn (Breaking Bad's Krysten Ritter).  Struggling to make a living off of her unique painting of sad waifs with disproportionately large eyes, Margaret soon meets a charming, charismatic artist with a big, big personality- Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz).  It doesn't take long before they're married, and one night while trying to sell their paintings, Margaret's "big eyes" and his own Paris scenes, Walter claims Margaret's work as his own.  Although disappointed by this, Margaret is persuaded by Walter that his personality is the best way to sell the paintings, and in time, to the chagrin of art critics like John Canaday (Terence Stamp) and fine art dealers (one played by Jason Schwartzman), who bemoan Margaret's paintings as "kitsch", her big eyes paintings become a full-blown artistic phenomenon.  Through cheap, mass-produced reproductions on posters and postcards sold across the United States, "Keane" becomes the bestselling artist in the country, but Walter appears to have more sides to him than he initially let on, hogging the spotlight and demanding more and more paintings from Margaret, who is forced to repress herself.

 It's no secret that Burton has been on the low end of his career in recent years, artistically anyway, with hollow, special effects and visuals-driven fantasies like ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) and the dreadful DARK SHADOWS (2012).  On the other hand, he hasn't been has much on the outs as he's been cut out to be; for instance, one of his very best films, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET was released in 2007, and while imperfect, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005) is much better than its reputation suggests.  His only truly terrible films are DARK SHADOWS and his 2001 remake of PLANET OF THE APES, but he does have an awful lot of mediocre movies in between his genuinely great ones.  That said, in the past seven years, his only decent film has been the 2012 stop-motion-animated remake FRANKENWEENIE, and BIG EYES is a real breath of fresh air.  With a cast of actors that includes none of Burton's regular collaborators, BIG EYES nonetheless reunites the director with the writing team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote another biopic Burton directed, and arguably his best film, ED WOOD.  Burton's distinctive style is not entirely absent throughout BIG EYES, but it's more restrained.  The biggest factor separating it from his early work is that it isn't a story about misfits or eccentrics so much, a consistent interest of his; although the story itself is weird, the characters aren't as much.  In fact, the main character is a subdued personality, and what makes her an outsider at all is her art and her marital history.
Burton also has a strong appreciation for kitsch, which usually plays into his movies as either a benefit or a detriment, and curiously, in a movie all about artistic kitsch, his own is heavily toned down.  Unfortunately, it gives it a sense of "playing safe", which plays through Burton's artistic voice, ironically, as nearly experimental.
The heart of the movie is Amy Adams' performance, a tremulous personality with an underlying strength that she's reluctant to use, exuding it through her art.  Christoph Waltz is over-the-top, but the supporting cast is great all around, including Terence Stamp, who never really acts and instead recites lines in an affecting but wooden tone, but is ideally cast as an antagonistic art critic.
It would be nice if BIG EYES marked a new turning point for Burton's career toward interesting, character-driven films for adults, but for now, it's nice to know that he still has something like this in him.