Kitschy as those Keane paintings were, Tim Burton doesn't capture the drama powerfully enough.
Big Eyes
Grade: C+
Director: Tim Burton (Ed Wood)
Screenplay: Scott Alexander (Ed Wood), Larry Karaszewski (Problem Child)
Cast: Amy Adams (American Hustle), Christoph Waltz (Inglorious Basterds)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime:
by John DeSando
"It's synthetic hack work, infinity of kitsch.” John Canady (Terence Stamp)
And so it goes for the professional critics in the ‘50’s and early ‘60’s who passed judgment on Margaret Keane’s (Amy Adams) big-eyes paintings. The public loved them and made Walter (an overacting Christoph Waltz) and Margaret fabulously wealthy. Only, the problem was that he ascribed the paintings to his authorship until she took him to court to prove her ownership, an irony for naysayers like snobby gallery owner Ruben (Jason Schwartzman), who quipped, “Who would want credit for it?” Perhaps Ruben and the critics missed the import of the truism, “The eyes are the windows of the soul.”
Those are the facts, but the real drama in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes is the turmoil in the demure breast of Margaret, who agrees to the fraud believing as a single mother she had no choice—no one would buy a woman’s paintings (except Georgia O’Keefe’s or George Eliot’s writing for that matter) if she did not assume a male name. Fortunately for her, she did gain some of her self respect by divorcing Walter in 1965.
When Joan Crawford places two Keanes in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and a Keane portrait on her autobiography’s cover, you know popular culture loved those eyes. Burton’s otherwise slow pace about all that success and domestic drama is relieved in the courtroom, when Margaret sues Walter for slander but without the grand feminist tirade that should have emerged. The judge (James Saito) orders both to create on easels in front of him—Walter can’t do it. Hooray for that.
The strength of the film is the thematic depiction of the role of many women in mid-twentieth century, which is not the aggressive feminist campaign of recent years. Rather, Burton takes care gently to bring the moment to its crisis late in the film.
“You undervalue yourself.” (Walter when he meets Margaret)
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
