Big Eyes

BIG EYES, a gift from director Tim Burton in 2014, was his best movie since Ed Wood, twenty years earlier. There were good ones in between (Big Fish a keeper) but the big-budget fantasies, while providing quirky humor and ample visual candy, didn’t touch real world sensibilities or carry the warmth of his biodramas. Like the tale of the indefatigable Mr. Wood, it was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Besides a great story and Burton’s finessing skill, Big Eyes is blessed by two ace cards in the lead roles, Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. Though both movies, each about artists with different levels of skill and success, won reviewer applause, it’s kind of sad that they were their director’s least successful at the box office, mass audiences usually preferring dazzle to depth. *

The turnabout reveals in the film are crucial to its impact, so sharing more a hint of the plot would be a cheat. Briefly: taking place between 1958 and 1986, in San Francisco and Oahu, with a critical jaunt to New York, it traces (or paints) the meeting, marriage and meltdown between portrait artist Margaret Keane (Adams) and her second husband, Walter (Waltz) who ‘marketed’ her work. He did so with off-the-charts entrepreneurial chutzpah that turned her paintings (soulful or kitschy depending on one’s taste—let’s allow they can be both at the same time) into a global phenomenon. Success made the Keane’s famous and angered highbrow art critics. It also hid secrets.

There’s a lot going on in this beautifully paced story. Personal, innate talent expressed in a particular way, hope, whirlwind romance, Americana, period change. Duplicity, envy, celebrity, greed, mass-marketing, domination, submission. Discovery, resolve, healing, just desserts. Waltz, 57, adds another to his gallery of rotters; in that category of character actors you “love to hate” he’s a modern day master, a better-looking Peter Lorre. Since Walter lives in a denial of reality universe of his own making, he’s allowed to play it smooth at first, then ‘big’ as the unhinged door begins to swing. Unsurprisingly, Adams, 39, holds you from her first moments on screen until the deeply satisfying finale, more proof, as if a long run of great roles (and multiple Oscar nominations) hadn’t already shown, that she’s a born-to-the-art natural, whose slightest gesture, glance or intonation can convey a palette of heartfelt emotions in a few moments. She sketches Margaret as winsome and open, vulnerable and wounded, resilient and determined. All you really need to know about how believable she is here is to recall Junebug, Enchanted, Sunshine Cleaning, Doubt, The Fighter, American Hustle, Arrival and Vice. It’s in the eyes.

For Ed Wood Burton used black & white camerawork to suit that fellow’s cheapjack grade-F thrillers, but color is a vital element for the Keane Scene, and the glowing, Kodak redolent cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel (Amelie, Across The Universe, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs) bathes Rick Heinrichs’ production design in period and locale ambiance, and of course figures in the artwork. Besides the Bay Area and Hawaii, a good deal of the shoot was done in British Columbia. Danny Elfman’s spare and sensitive score (his 15th for Burton) adds quietly propulsive backing, and at a key moment the soundtrack drops in Lana Del Rey’s haunting “Big Eyes”, written expressly for the film.

The box office totaled $29,253,000 (half in the States/Canada, ranking 129th), not huge, but more than enough to cover a smartly spent $10,000,000 production tab. There were awards nominations galore but zip from the Oscars, which ought to have stirred up several nominees, at the very least one to luminous Lana for Best Song.

She knows

With Danny Huston (as Dick Nolan, scoopy snoop for the San Francisco Examiner), Krysten Ritter (sharp as Margaret’s slyly observant & with-it friend ‘Dee Ann’), Terence Stamp (acerbic NY Times art eagle John Canaday), Jon Polito (as Enrico Banducci, owner of ‘The Hungry I’, legendary nightclub), Jason Schwartzman (disgusted gallery owner), Delaney Raye (Margaret’s daughter Jane, as a child), Madeleine Arthur (16, Jane as a teenager: peg Arthur as a star to track) and James Saito (the judge who’s had enough). 106 minutes.