Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter
My Rating: Loved It!
It's easy to see why Burton gravitated towards this story. For one, it's absurd and absolutely ridiculous, but also the strangeness and sadness in all of the paintings eyes is in line with Burton's crazy works of art.
The true story starts off following a recently divorced woman in the late 1950's, which is a time when women rarely divorced and weren't seen anywhere near as equal to men. She had a young daughter that she brought with her to San Franscisco, who was her inspiration for her big eyed paintings. As soon as she got to San Fran she was swept off her feet by a fellow painter who seemed too good to be true. It turns out that was just the case. After she married him, she signed all of her paintings with his last name: Keane. This was a huge mistake because once the paintings started to sell, her husband started selling them as his; and then the paintings turned into a national phenomenon but everyone thought he was the artist.
I think this is a great change of pace and style for Burton, who, as you probably know, has made some of the better, darker movies of the past several decades. This is certainly his brightest, color wise, movie to date. And Big Eyes and Ed Wood are the only two movies from his 17 film catalogue that are grounded in reality; actually, they're both biographies.
Big Eyes starts out a tad slow and even a little sappy, but progressively builds up to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. I found the story a bit frustrating because Mrs. Keane kept the secret for so long, but half a century ago there was a much different dynamic between men and women. That plus the seriously introverted nature of Mrs. Keane thoroughly explains why she let it happen the way it did. I'm very glad, for her sake and for the movie's, that she left him and eventually challenged him in court. The courtroom scene was a very rewarding payoff.
Amy Adams does a fantastic job embodying the quiet yet strong-willed protagonist. As Burton and Adams explain in the videos below, it's especially hard to portray a woman so quiet like Mrs. Keane, but Amy Adams definitely served her justice, and she should get yet another Oscar nomination for her performance. Not that I thought Christoph Waltz did poorly, quite the opposite in fact, but I thought he was a weird choice for the role.
Big Eyes is, above all, one hell of a true story, but it's also one of Tim Burton's most grounded films and another showcase for Amy Adams talent.