Tim Burton really needed a movie like Big Eyes to bring him back down to Earth. Visionally, he has been stuck in a rut for the past decade or so. Movies like Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland, Corpse Bride, and Dark Shadows have been mostly a regurgitation of him trying to re-create his gothic classics of his early work, like Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow. Whenever he takes a break from trying, and ultimately failing, from capturing the beauty of previous films and gives us something new and un-Burton-esque, it's normally stellar. Just look at Ed Wood and Big Fish. And while Big Eyes isn't that great of a movie, it excites me to think that this might've been the break he needed in order to give us something exceptional in his next film (which, as it happens, is an adaptation of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children and is as Burton-y as he can get).
Big Eyes, from the get-go, just has a strange feeling to it. Not strange like Burton's previous work, strange in the sense of tone. We begin with Margaret leaving her first husband and taking her daughter away to San Francisco where she tries to sell her unique pieces of art-- beautiful paintings of her daughter, as well as other children, with large, bulging eyes. "The eyes are windows to the soul" she explains when asked about why she paints all of her portraits the same way. She then meets smooth-talker Walter Keane, a painter himself who falls in love with the quiet and demure Margaret. The two marry and Walter unsuccessfully tries to sell Margaret's paintings. Walter's background as a painter of landscapes hinders his chances of selling his wife's paintings because he does not have good standing in the art world. After a chance encounter at a night club, Walter takes credit for Margaret's work and ends up being the top selling artist in the United States. Margaret, for ten years, paints her heart out and Walter takes the credit for the paintings. He first assures her the only reason he's doing it this way is because women aren't taken seriously in the art world, but she continues doing it for years when Walter becomes domineering, threatening and even violent. The film culminates when Margaret, tired of being the nobody for so long watching her passion being squandered by an idiot, fights back and takes Walter to court in order to get her good name restored and the public to know who the true artist is.
It's a really sad tale as well as a very interesting one... but not one I feel illicits a full movie. I would've been just as enthralled and amazed at the story if I had looked it up on Wikipedia. I get that it's an important story to know, maybe even tell when it comes to feminism, but Margaret, throughout the film, is a very passive person. Amy Adams even said she was drawn to the project because of Margaret's "quiet dignity". Well, she's certainly quiet. She's certainly not a fighter. And when she finally does fight back at the end, she essentially lets Walter screw himself over rather than actively pursue her right as an artist to claim her work. We're already aware that men were pricks in the 60s and that women had a much harder time breaking into a world like painting... but there's nothing really new here that we didn't already know about that era, and Margaret just kinda... lets it happen until it doesn't anymore.
Beyond that, the movie is tonally all wrong. This should be a movie about a woman fighting for artistic integrity that culminates in a very serious court case with a very powerful decision. However, the movie just kind of treads along very stale not really sure if they want to go the funny route, the dramatic route, the old school Burton route... it just kind of... is. The acting choices were a little strange to me, as well. Amy Adams was great if she was going for quiet dignity. Most of her acting was done through her looks... which makes sense considering what she painted for a living. But, it's Christoph Waltz that really throws me for a loop here. I can't tell if he's brilliant in this... or if he just missed the mark badly. He's essentially playing a caricature of a person. He doesn't act like anyone in particular, but a series of tropes that we're used to in other movies, but here is out of place. He's a smooth talker at first, then he's silly, then he suddenly is prone to outbursts of very strange and violent anger. Then, he's an idiot. There is literally a scene in court when he decides to represent himself that he calls himself to the stand then runs back and forth from the defendant's table to the witness stand charading both parts. It's a mildly funny scene that would maybe get a laugh in a silly comedy, but here I wasn't sure what the hell was going on. I don't know whether or not he just didn't know what to do with the character OR if the choice was to make him as wacky and fake as a character because that's who Walter was as a human being. He'd act like a painter, he'd act like art is his life's work, he'd take credit for anything that wasn't his-- signifying he's a fake person. So, did Waltz purposely act like he was a fake person in order to insult the real Walter and make a statement of his own? Either way, it made the movie feel very strange and off.
Whatever the case, Big Eyes is not a must-see movie. It is kind of a stale telling of a semi-interesting story. What's weird here is that while the movie doesn't look like a typical Tim Burton vehicle, there's still that Burton feel with the characters where he doesn't really fully know what to do with them. This is a pattern he's gotten into recently with awkwardly telling a story. There are better ways to tell this story... and there are certainly much worse ways. I'd say just read about the events that take place in the film and save yourself a little time.
C-
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