Big Eyes (2014)
Directed by Tim Burton
In the late 1950s and early '60s, artist Walter Keane achieves unbelievable fame and success with portraits of saucer-eyed waifs. However, no one realizes that his wife, Margaret, is the real painter behind the brush. Although Margaret is horrified to learn that Walter is passing off her work as his own, she is too meek to protest too loudly. It isn't until the Keanes' marriage comes to an end and a lawsuit follows that the truth finally comes to light.
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3 films that influenced Big Eyes
What critics say influenced Big Eyes
In the seriously entertaining “Big Eyes,” working on a modest scale akin to “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton descends from the billion-dollar-grossing heights of “Alice in Wonderland” to a biography of an artist whose work was embraced for all the wrong reasons and a fraud carried out against her passionate, personal imagery.
Working from a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karasewski -- who, notably, penned Burton's similarly themed "Ed Wood" -- it focuses on the story of Walter Keane, the artist who became a pop-culture sensation in the 1950s and 1960s for his paintings of waifish children with weirdly oversized eyes (and who are often clutching puppies or kittens with similarly sad eyes).
Where Ed Wood was a valentine to artistic oddballs and eccentrics on the fringes told with an optimism that was certainly not mirrored in Wood’s real life, this is a story about the pain behind the façade of happiness and success.
It was seven years before he’d make Ed Wood, but even then he hated when people referred to the visionary behind Plan 9 from Outer Space as the “worst director of all time,” and his subsequent biopic was an ironic celebration.
It’s got a decent script from Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (they wrote Burton’s Ed Wood), an approachable concept, and it didn’t cost $250 million.
In the other, smaller category dwell the eccentric, self-consciously grotesque, clearly more personal projects any self-respecting art school grad would love to sink his teeth into, à la Ed Wood, Frankenweenie, and Burton’s latest release, Big Eyes.
No doubt Burton has encountered this while navigating the Hollywood studio system, balancing big-budget tentpoles like “Planet of the Apes” (2001) and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005) with more eclectic fare such as “Frankenweenie” (2012) and “Big Fish” (2003).
Big Eyes is Burton’s most mature work since the last time he got mistaken for an Oscar-season hack, 2003’s “movie for people that don’t really like Tim Burton movies,” Big Fish.
This is Burton’s best since “Big Fish.”
Here is the careful eye responsible for such films as Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994), and Big Fish (2003).
Big Eyes is my favorite film of his since Big Fish in 2003.
And yes, if it needs to be said, this is Burton's most aggressively "normal" looking film, lacking even the fantasy sequences of Big Fish .
The more significant dual personality showcased by “Big Eyes,” however, belongs to director Tim Burton, who makes something of a return to form with what seems to be his most personal film in years, a rare original project in a decade-and-a-half of mostly remakes and reboots (“Planet of the Apes,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Dark Shadows”).
Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel has a brief history with Tim Burton films that are at-least somewhat set in the real world (that would be Dark Shadows ), and he again thrives on the notion of fusing a famously fantastical filmmaker to an even more buttoned-down setting.
After the reaction to such movies as "Dark Shadows" and "Alice in Wonderland," Burton may feel some empathy.
But while it’s a bit of a departure for the oddball director, “Big Eyes” is his best film in years, even if that comes off like a backhanded compliment considering some of the garbage (“ Alice in Wonderland ,” “ Dark Shadows ”) he’s released.
Burton, a director with a deep love of kitsch ("Pee-Wee's Big Adventure"), camp ("Dark Shadows") and outsider art ("Ed Wood"), may seem the ideal director to make a mockery of Margaret Keane, the unassuming housewife behind those critically reviled but hugely popular paintings.