Big Eyes (2014)

'Big Eyes' is a lightweight biopic about a divorced single mother called Margaret Ulbrich, who dreams of supporting herself as an artist while she paints kitschy portraits of street children with sad, over-sized eyes. After meeting and marrying a glib hustler, she permits her new husband to claim authorship of her work when he sells a couple of the paintings. In due course Margaret's 'masterpieces' become as monstrously popular as Thomas Kinkade's later exercises in tacky bad taste, crude craftsmanship and sappy sentimentality.

Based on real events, the film skates over the psychological issues, and depicts only the surface of the couple's dysfunctional relationship. Predictably, some 'facts' of this version are disputed, and many story elements have been altered or invented for dramatic effect. Amy Adams is exceptional as usual, but the movie's major weakness is Christoph Waltz's over-the-top pantomime villain performance as her sociopathic spouse, who schemes, blusters and womanizes while Margaret labors anonymously in the studio. Director Burton pads out his flimsy material with generic characters like Terence Stamp's NYT art critic, Jason Schwartzman's gallery owner, and Danny Huston's journalist, who also provides some unnecessary narration. In the end - like Margaret's paintings - "Big Eyes' only delivers a chintzy ephemeral experience.

Fmovies: 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

Charming, but uneven, entertaining yet unsatisfying, "Big Eyes" definitely does not come into the category of great or important true story movies. It is clearly a change of style for Tim Burton (if is very relieving not to see Johhny Depp acting all weird), but even though the time at the theater doesn't in any way feel wasted or boring, instead quite pleasant, the movie is too chaotic and quirky for it to be taken seriously in any way.

A premise that has lots of potential is partially wasted in aimless scenes or in repetitiveness. The film doesn't really make a point about anything and has way too much flashy stuff to feel grounded in any way. There would be nothing wrong there, but the fact that in it's uneven tone there seems to emerge a will to give an accurate and worthy recounting of these events makes so much of the drama feel out of nowhere. Storytelling isn't exactly where the movie succeeds. The courtroom scenes are definitely the weakest of all and made me mad multiple times because of their absolute preposterousness.

Anyways, the film is built around a strong enough cast, photography, premise, writing and design that it would be hard to get bored in anyway. The pace is fluent enough and the duration of the film is just about right for the content it presents. I wanted to like this more and see the story be given a better portrayal, but in no way I could say "Big Eyes" was a failure.

Big Eyes fmovies. Tim Burton's touching dramatization of the relationship of Margaret and Walter Keane almost works but somehow the dramatic arc seems arbitrary and we must accept the developments in their story as much from what the characters announce about themselves as from what we see enacted emotionally. Essentially, the husband is what we might call a pathological liar and the wife is one of the most gullible and trusting people who ever lived.

The shy, self-effacing art school graduate Margaret Ulbrich specialized in painting portraits of children with big, sad eyes which she would sell at street fairs for pocket change. When she walked out on her husband in 1958 to make a new life for herself and her daughter in San Francisco, she met and married the aggressive Walter Keane, a real estate broker who pretended to be a Sunday painter but was actually a plagiarist with marketing skills who took over the marketing of Margaret's works and sold them under his own name, first on canvas and then as mass produced posters, becoming a well-known purveyor of mid-20th-century kitsch who, as his character claims in the film, inspired Andy Warhol.

Amy Adams is appropriately choked up and tremulous as Margaret but Christoph Waltz is an odd choice for Walter. For starters, the character is as American as the Great Plains but Waltz cannot entirely obliterate his Austrian accent; it colors his every utterance. Then, his theatrical mannerisms make him seem more like someone with Multiple Personality Disorder than a mere Jekyll-and-Hyde, as his wife describes him at one point. Waltz entertains us, and we are conscious that we are seeing a bravura performance, but we are not getting the human being named Walter Keane.

Burton makes very good use of the singularly appealing Terence Stamp as John Canaday, a highbrow New York Times art critic who lambasts the Keane oeuvre in print, leading to a confrontation at a cocktail party – a fire and ice moment and a high point of the film.

The film leaves a touching, but light impression, much like the big-eyed paintings at its center.

The Warhol quote is making fun of its ghastliness and the invisible hand of the market. An odd choice to start on by mocking its own subject. As well I sense a subconscious undercurrent reflecting his own brand.

But the key to Tim Burton has always been Disney not Gothic. Here is finally a proper Gothic work in being everything but, with its colorful San Francisco and Hawaii; Waltz through structures of mental control, abuse in power, serial plagiarizing, is a Gothic monster.

There would be inheritances in stories like this.

But it's about speech as well and how if you don't say it it'll never be said, begging the tragedy how painting isn't enough. Her eyes don't just see but can't not see. They gaze the heightened details of the world. Then would be susceptible to larger than life psychologies which would entice her in love. A Gothic torture how love controls her. Then when images can't be hers, she chooses numbers. Numerology in the pop 60s make her almost a chosen one for backing the zeitgeist: late 20th century advanced statistics would forecast and streamline every single industry. Her drawings very much forecasted the medium of anime, which rivals all of world cinema. By her own devices left unchecked might've lead to some great garage start-up, Mac, PC... Keane. In all seriousness societal mechanics denying her ability to grow in art reminds me of Burton himself trapped in the machine of his brand.

Credit. Silence. Eyes. Its elements fuse a true fright. "Mother, I know..." Few will know the soul-crushing abuse of others taking credit for their work.

Usually, a woman so pretty would not be a Tim Burton outsider but the spark of her ghoulish secret drawings make her as him. Oddest. The whole film is about these demonic traumatized orphans happening in its background. A battlefield seems to be the anger as the commodification of western privilege. But against the abstract expressionist backdrop it's a valid contrary.

Most beautiful is it's this Tim Burton art film where performers are allowed to act not pose, even though it abuses green screen (its artifice you could say is Warholian at least...); much is said about the overacting, where Waltz has to strut around and make a great show of it, but he's being watched by Burton and Keane's; eyes so big warrant big visions.

Just watched this with Mom on a Netflix disc. We both were enthralled by this true story of painter Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) whose defining feature is the big eyes of her subjects and hubby Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) who publicly takes credit for her work for years. It takes place from the late '50s through the '60s and partly seems a comment on how stifled Mrs. Keane felt not being the one getting recognition for her work and the crises that created between her and her husband, not to mention her daughter who was often the subject for the paintings. Tim Burton seems the right director for this film especially when he has Margaret dreaming or during the climatic courtroom scenes. The light and dark colors also contribute to the period atmosphere to pretty compelling effect. While I liked many of the supporting characters, I had to admit I was a bit disappointed by the one portrayed by Krysten Ritter as I half thought she'd play more in the way things turned out in the film than she did. Still, Big Eyes was mostly enjoyable enough the way it was told. P.S. I had also watched a vintage interview with the real Walter Keane on Merv Griffin on YouTube in which he seemed to flirt with a female guest there. (The cad!) Then I saw a couple of interviews on YT with the real Margaret Keane on Mike Douglas' shows-one in Hawaii and one with Shirley Temple whose child portrait Ms. Keane painted for her-and her Southern charm shone through immensely!