Grandes Olhos

It's 1958 Northern California. Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) leaves her husband and takes her young daughter Jane to San Francisco following her friend DeeAnn. When her husband threatening to take Jane away, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) proposes to her and they quickly marry. Walter rents wall space from club owner Enrico Banducci and they get into a fight which makes it on the front page. Reporter Dick Nolan writes about Walter and his paintings. What started as a misunderstanding becomes a full blown lie. The paintings become a hit as Walter becomes a salesman taking credit for all the paintings. Eventually Walter finds that selling posters are more profitable and big eyes become everywhere. Times reporter John Canaday is a harsh critic.

This is a surprisingly traditional biopic from director Tim Burton. Other than the big eyed people that Margaret sees in a couple of scenes, there is nothing that is obviously Burtonesque. Amy Adams does a nice performance although I think her character is a little bit too willful at the beginning. It would be more dramatic to have her character grow over time. Christoph Waltz is amazing as the impresario manic salesman. In the end, this is a well made biopic with a couple of good performances and a couple of funny moments.

I had never heard of Margaret Keane or her paintings before "Big Eyes" got released, making the story all the more forceful. My interpretation of Keane's story is that she was afraid to stand up for herself. Walter manipulated her into accepting his shenanigans.

Amy Adams puts on a really good performance as Margaret. Much like her roles in "Junebug", "Enchanted" and "Doubt", her character's idealism collapses when faced with reality. Christoph Waltz turns Walter into a mixture of smooth and terrifying, but a real creep more than anything.

This is a very different turn for Tim Burton. Far from his homages to horror flicks and swipes at suburban America, he takes a serious approach to the subject matter. I recommend the movie. Whether you know of the story or not, you're sure to be impressed with the movie. Margaret's paintings might not appeal to you - they don't appeal to me - it's important to know what she went through, and the movie does a good job looking at that.

Tim Burton has crafted quite a reputation as a director of the surreal and the macabre. In his films, he conjures up dark, Gothic images of death and despair, but suffuses them with his special brand of bittersweet magic and whimsy. On the surface, Big Eyes is right up his alley - this true story of the fiercest and most outrageous copyright battle in art history centres on a series of big-eyed waifs, almost ghostly figures of hope and horror that fit perfectly into Burton's aesthetic. And yet, barring a few scenes, the final film is curiously characterless: a competently-made, shrewdly- cast biopic that never quite troubles the heart or spirit the way Burton's films can do.

Margaret (Amy Adams) is trying to scrape together a living for herself and her young daughter when she meets Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), a charismatic real-estate broker who would rather make a name for himself as an artist. He offers her a home, love and financial security, and she quite happily takes his surname as her own. Once they are married, Walter keeps trying to break into the notoriously snobby art world, selling his own Parisian landscapes and Margaret's portraits of wistful young girls with enormous eyes. But it's her art - simply signed as 'Keane' - that grabs the attention and, as one white lie leads to another, Margaret suddenly finds herself shoved into the background. Walter has taken credit for her work, and is well on his way to transforming it into a global phenomenon.

There are many big ideas swirling around in Big Eyes: art, deceit, integrity, commercialism and love are shaken liberally and stirred through with deeper issues of sexism and psychological abuse. This comes through pretty well in the film, which paints a chilling picture of Margaret's enforced anonymity. As her husband delights in dominating newpaper headlines and picking fights with famed art critics like John Canaday (Terence Stamp), she fades almost literally into the background - creating ever more pieces of art for him in the solitude of her attic studio, lying even to her daughter about her life's work. The film also draws a canny, subtle distinction between the artist and the businessman: Walter may not be much of the former, but his skills as the latter are what drag Margaret's work from county fairs onto the international stage.

Through it all, Burton exercises a light - almost impersonal - touch. He scatters a few scenes into the film that hint at his trademark film-making style: Margaret bumps into a crass supermarket display of her art, and suddenly everyone around her sports the limpid, haunting eyes of the waifs no one knows are hers. But, for the most part, Burton keeps himself out of the proceedings. It's proof that he can create nightmares on a more subtle and realistic level, capturing the darker side of life as it can be rather than as he imagines it. Occasionally, however, the film begs the question whether he should - it's stuffy and dry, never quite engaging either the heart or the imagination.

That's through no fault of his cast. Adams anchors Big Eyes with an astounding portrayal of a complex woman: one who's willing to cast off the chains of her first marriage, only to wind up tangled in the snare of another. It would be easy to play Margaret as a victim, but Adams finds the bitter strength in someone who must endure untold torment in a world and home that constantly remind her she's too weak to succeed on her own. Waltz's performance, on the other hand, is puzzling - he plays Walter in the constant key of manic, right from the start, so that the character's smooth, smug charm is all you ever see of the man. There is something undeniably delicious, though, about Waltz's Walter when the cracks begin to show: he simmers his way into a kind of monstrous madness, which lends both drama and humour to the proceedings when Margaret finally brings her claim to court.

On the evidence of Big Eyes, there's hope yet for Burton if he would like to switch to making more literal films. He unearths plenty of smart, insightful tension in this troubled marriage, a partnership on unequal terms that becomes less emotional and more financial by the day. But the film also stumbles along at points, bled dry when it should radiate colour and emotion. It's hard to shake the feeling, too, that Waltz seems to be under the impression that he's in a more old-school, over-the-top Burton production. It's at these moments, in particular, that one might long for a splash of Burton's own personality - the chance to look at this world, this story and these people through his eyes.

"Big Eyes" was nominated under Comedy & Musical category during the last Golden Globe Awards. Lead actress Amy Adams even won the Best Actress prize for starring in it. While I was watching this film though, it turned out to be furthest from what I had in mind for a comedy. The topic of this film was actually disturbing and depressing. However, being a Tim Burton film, there was certainly dark humor to be had.

This film is a biopic of 1950s novelty pop artist Margaret Keane (formerly Ulbrich, nee Hawkins). She developed a series of haunting acrylic paintings of kids with big dark round eyes. Walter Keane, her rascal salesman of a husband, took advantage of the rising popularity of her paintings. He claimed and mass-marketed them as his own.

Meanwhile, timid Margaret was forced to conform to his web of lies. She was locked in her workroom in their home to paint even more Big Eyes, away from the prying eyes of the public, and even her own daughter. Will Margaret be able to break free from the prison she has trapped herself into?

Amy Adams quietly carried this film capably on her shoulders. There was nothing funny about what she had to do here as Margaret. Her character was the victim of a most cruel crime. Her husband stole not only her art, but also her confidence, and her very freedom. Adams played a weak character, but as an actress, Adams was anything but. With her wise underplaying, Adams successfully won our empathy and compassion for her difficult plight.

Christoph Waltz, on the other hand, was over-the-top, one-dimensional, practically cartoonish, as the manipulative con-man Walter. From his very first scene, you already knew this smooth-talking guy was up to no good. Up to his very last scene in that courtroom, Waltz's Walter was a manic caricature, never really coming across as a real person at all. This may well Tim Burton's direction in play, as this character Walter was the source of most of this film's black humor. Waltz's fiery interaction with Terence Stamp's harsh NY Times art critic character is most memorable as well.

This film's narrative was simple and straightforward. Yet because of Amy Adams' riveting and heart-rending performance, we will be held until the compelling end. The technical aspects of the film, particularly the pastel color palette of the photography, as well as the period production design, costumes and makeup, all contribute to the overall charming look and nostalgic feel of the film as a whole. 7/10.

This is a fascinating story which should make for a fantastic movie, but instead it's just ok. Entertaining, but nothing truly special. The worst part is that there are hints of something more interesting underneath, like when Margaret sees people with abnormally large eyes in the supermarket or big eyes in her own reflection. We wonder how these paintings are affecting her identity, because in a way they are all she is, but she can't claim them as hers. But that idea is just kind of... left there.

And then there's the main problem: Christoph Waltz. He's not the only one at fault - his character goes from charming to cartoon villain which can certainly be blamed on the writers and Burton - but his over acted performance, particularly towards the end, completely obscured any depth that Walter's character may have had.

Amy Adams, on the other hand, is fantastic and certainly the movie's saving grace. I would have liked to see more of her relationship with Walter, more of what made her willing to keep cranking out paintings for her husband, though I suspect a more three-dimensional Walter would have been needed for that.

And the narrator/reporter was completely unnecessary. I kept forgetting he existed and then wondering who was talking for a few seconds before I remembered that the movie had a narrator.

All in all, entertaining but disappointing. 6/10