Film Review: Big Eyes
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Just because a filmmaker seems to be getting back on track doesn’t mean that they should be given a free pass. This is a statement I pondered last month when I saw American Sniper and the same statement I thought about while watching Big Eyes, Tim Burton‘s return to the land of non-CGI foolery. While it was nice to see a “subdued” Burton film, I can’t say I was happy to watch Big Eyes, a movie that’s lacking in energy and keeping an audience’s interest.
Big Eyes starts off with some voiceover from a gossip columnist as we are in 1950s Texas where a housewife who we will come to know as Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) is packing up her clothes, paintings and daughter to leave her abusive husband. She makes the journey out west to San Francisco, happy to not be in an abusive relationship, but now struggling to make ends meet. She takes up painting in the park and it’s here that she encounters Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) and they immediately begin a whirlwind courtship. It’s during this time that Walter notices Margaret’s paintings and concots a simple lie (that he painted them himself) to get them a spot in a club…in the hallway towards the bathroom. Margaret is perturbed, but decides to go along with the lie, not strong enough to really stand up for herself. This begins an 11 journey where Walter becomes a big star and Margaret an overworked, underappreciated artist. After the disolution of their marriage, Margaret has to find the strength to take back what was hers.
This movie has so many things that should have worked and yet Big Eyes doesn’t amount to much more than some pretty colors and movie that never fully realizes it’s potential. The script is perhaps the biggest culprit in that it never really lets you in on the story. The movie zooms at a ridiculous pace for the first 45 minutes before grinding to a halt, which doesn’t help us with a tale that requires us to understand the characters. Furthermore, this script is “hampered” by having a protagonist who isn’t active until the very end. Now I use hampered in quotes because it’s not that Amy Adams or the character Margaret Keane isn’t interesting but that in having a demure protagonist you have to give them things to do. Having her just paint in a room isn’t interesting to watch. The bigger problem with this movie is Christoph Waltz, who plays Walter like his previous two English language roles cranked up to a level of volume Jhene Aiko wishes she could attain. Waltz is just so much at every moment and he’s neither charming nor menacing, he’s just loud, and in a film that’s nothing but bright colors and lack of emotioanl ressonance, he sticks out like a sore thumb. Burton doesn’t help him out much, because it seems he’s more concerned with making a smaller film that gets critical acclaim rather than making the movie Big Eyes needed to be.
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