Big Eyes (2014): Big Mess

What is it with director Tim Burton?

More and more over the years, his work has tended toward weird, exagerated, eccentric, bizarre (or macabre) characters and stories. Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, a most creepy Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, and so forth. At first this was interesting, different and kinda cool.  But after awhile, not so much. Hanging out with Johnny Depp probably didn’t help.  Plus, he’s got this thing about big, heavily made up eyes. 

Speaking of which, remember those sort-of cute, sort-of dumb, always kitschy paintings of the big-eyed waifs from the Keane Gallery in the 1960’s? Turns out Burton loves them! He actually collects those things. Which may explain a lot - including his interest in making a movie  that tells the story about the artist behind those "Big Eyes" paintings. And it's an interesting enough story, involving a charlatan, an oppressed wife, a gullible public, a spectacular trial, and some sort of redemption.

The charlatan was Michael Keane (Christoph Waltz - Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) - narcissistic, avaricious, an amazing salesman, and an aspiring but untalented artist. The oppressed wife was Margaret Keane (Amy Adams – The Fighter, American Hustle, Her) - demure, dutiful, subservient, a divorced mom and talented but kitschy painter. She painted those stylized pictures of big eyed little girls, lots of them. Michael hooked up with Margaret in the mid-fifties, married her, and, when it became apparent that Jane Q Public fancied his wife’s adorable waifs (and cared not a whit for his canvasses), he set about hawking her paintings. They were simply signed “Keane “ and for a sociopath like Michael it was but a small step to claim them as his own. Margaret, dependent and under her husband’s thumb, reluctantly went along.  Michael loved public attention and had a genius for publicity and self promotion. He opened up a gallery in North Beach, San Francisco. The big eyed ragamuffins sold like hotcakes. Their images were on posters, postcards, coffee cups, you name it.

Margaret enjoyed the wealth, but Michael’s mega-ego, his deception, and the consequential lack of recognition for her, all weighed heavily on Margaret. After ten years she had enough. She divorced Michael, and a few years later, let the cat out of the bag. What happened then is the culmination of the story and the movie.

As I said, it’s a pretty good story. And the movie has its moments -  in particular, a hilarious, extended trial scene in which Michael Keane, channeling TV’s Perry Mason, attempts to defend himself. There's a cute moment when Margaret starts to hallucinate big eyes on ordinary people she sees in the market. All in all, however, Big Eyes is not a very good motion picture. 

A big part of the problem is in the casting. Austrian Christoph Waltz is a fine actor, but as Nebraska born Walter Keane, he is unable to sustain an American accent, and as the movie goes on, this lapse becomes increasingly disconcerting, making it difficult to believe in what we are watching.  Another problem is that Waltz and Adams seem to be in two different movies most of the time.   Waltz’s characterization of Walter is over the top – at all times; Adams plays Margaret in an overly quiet, understated way.  Adams may have been trying to accentuate the dysfunctional, burdensome nature of the marital dynamic between this husband and wife, or perhaps the cultural oppression of women generally during the period.  I’m a huge fan of Amy Adams, but I have to say that, whatever her motivation, she overdoes it.  It’s hard to emotionally connect with such a mousy character, particularly when she’s playing against the near-comical foil represented by Waltz’s  version of Walter. (And don't get me started about her hairdo.)

There are other missteps as well.  Danny Huston plays a prominent San Francisco gossip columnist called Dick Nolan, kind of a Herb Caen type, who takes an interest in Walter Keane, and promotes him.  Nolan is a stand-in for the press generally, in the simplified world of this movie. Nolan occasionally adds some narration to the story, although why he does this is never explained (there is no frame setting this up), which is noticeably odd. 

Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad) does a nice job playing a friend of Margaret, who smells a rat; but her role is undeveloped, and she disappears for a good part of the film. Terence Stamp plays an unnecessarily snooty art critic, who correctly and publicly notes that whatever else they are, the big eyed waifs are not “art.” Jason Schwartzman plays the owner of a fine art gallery, also snooty, who simply cannot believe the success of the kitschy Keanes. (Presumably, Burton, the collector, disagrees with these assessments.) 

Although some reviews have hailed Big Eyes as a change of pace, and a return to quality, mainstream movie-making by Tim Burton, I can’t agree. The picture is an unsatisfying mishmash. It is entertaining, if you don’t expect too much, but  there are so many better films available in theaters this season, I’d pass on this one. Wait for the dvd.

In wide release.