For days now I've been trying to persuade my amateur film critic boyfriend to write a review for Big Eyes. We saw it together the day after Christmas and he enjoyed it as much as I had, and mentioned he'd probably write about it for his website (he has a column on Punk Effect). Well, cut to one month later, no review. So I did the mature thing and gave him the puppy-eyed pout, stroked his arm (and his ego) and sweetly asked "Please? Pretty please?"
"Why?" was the unsympathetic (and, admittedly, pretty confused) response. "You already know my thoughts on it."
"Yeah, but I need backup. I need, like, hardcore proof that I'm not the only one who thinks that movie deserved a shit-ton more attention than it got."
Still he didn't budge ("it's been too long since it came out, I need to re-watch it, you know how it is, what if I gave it a mention in my Oscar predictions article?") so I decided, in my classic immature feminist fashion, well, the hell with it, I'll write about the damn movie myself.
Now, I don’t have the academic style that Ian has. He actually has the whole “write about the film without your emotions getting in the way” thing down and I definitely don’t. Once I actually got into film school, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that I am infinitely better at writing movies than writing about movies, and he is definitely far superior to me in the writing-about-movies department. (And if he ever tells you that’s not true, you have my permission to…scold him. Politely. Because if you hurt him I’ll kick your butt.) I ramble. I gush. I do stupid things like yell “American Sniper stole Gone Girl’s nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and thus I WILL NEVER EVER LOVE THAT MOVIE I DON’T CARE HOW GOOD IT IS OR HOW MANY TIMES IT MADE ME CRY.” Yes, I did that. Tonight, actually. Damn you, Clint Eastwood.
But I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to take a stab at putting into words all the things that Big Eyes made me think and feel. It won’t be academic, it won’t be objective--hell, let’s be honest, the majority of it probably won’t make sense. But if you think you can keep up with my train of thought, go for it. Buckle up, this is going to be a ride.
First of all, well. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, shall we?
Tim Burton has made some really crappy movies recently.
There. I said it. I love Tim Burton, but dear God, his track record over the last decade or so is just abominable. I wasn’t crazy about Alice in Wonderland, I thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory deserved an official Congratulations You Missed the Point of the Book Big-Time award, and as for Dark Shadows--well, let’s just not talk about that one, okay? Let’s just pretend that movie didn’t exist. That’s how bad it was.
But oh, Big Eyes makes up for all of them. Big Eyes doesn’t just make up for all of Burton’s past screwups, it transforms him into a new man. Big Eyes takes us back to the days of Ed Wood, back before TIM BURTON became an official brand, back in the days when his films were...you know...relatable. In Amy Adams’ Margaret Keane, I see the combined vulnerability and inner strength of characters like Edward in Edward Scissorhands, or Lydia in Beetle Juice, or Emily in Corpse Bride. These are arguably some of Burton’s best characters, not because they’re iconic (though honestly I’m not sure how much more iconic it gets than Edward Scissorhands) but because they represent the emotions and situations that normal people face on a daily basis.
Let’s break this down: first time we see Margaret, she’s on the run from her first husband with her young daughter in tow. We don’t know exactly what he’s done to her. But in the 50s, women didn’t just up and leave their husbands as punishment for leaving the toilet seat up--not that it’s like that today, but you get where I’m coming from. Back in the 1950s, women’s identities were tied to their marital status. A broken marriage was not just sad, it was an outright failure. So for a woman to pack up and leave her husband meant two things: 1) said husband was genuinely terrifying, and 2) the former wife had, not to put too fine a point on it, balls of steel. I have seen reviews that complained, “well, the first time we see Margaret she’s running away, she never confronts anything, she’s just too passive, she always runs, blah blah blah.” No, you don’t get it. She’s not running scared. She is making an incredibly difficult decision for the good of herself and her child--something she will do repeatedly for the rest of the film.
I’ve always strongly felt that Burton’s best films aren’t his most sensational, but the ones with obvious ties to his personal life. And having read Burton on Burton until I’ve practically memorized it (I know, I know, I need a life, believe me I’ve heard it before) I know that he made a living as a Disney animator after college--imagine that for a second, okay? Tim Burton, King of Halloween, working on The Fox and the Hound? I sure as hell can’t picture that, but he did it. After Margaret leaves her husband, she takes a job painting furniture. She’s an artist and she longs for more, but this is what she has to do to survive, and so it’s what she’ll do. We only ever see one shot of her actually on the job, but it’s all we need to see. She’s in a room of other painters, all painting the exact same thing. It’s killing her. It’s stifling. It’s about as impersonal a thing as she could possibly do with her talent.
It’s Tim Burton working at Disney.
Thematically Big Eyes tackles the idea of artistic subjectivity. Whether you like Margaret Keane’s big-eyed creations or not, you can’t deny that she has skill as a painter, and there is something genuinely enthralling about her portraits. And it’s exactly the same thing with Burton’s films--like him or not, he’s been a formative influence in Hollywood. Don’t believe me? Look at the on-screen depictions of Batman before Burton’s 1989 take on the Dark Knight. We’ve come a long way from Adam West, and it’s mostly thanks to Tim Burton. (He says you’re welcome, Chris Nolan.)
Stylistically Big Eyes is not a Burton film. There’s no Johnny Depp, no Helena Bonham Carter, no stop-motion, no deliberately cheesy SFX, no visual similarities to 1950s b-film horror, no barely-veiled references to Edgar Allen Poe or Vincent Price, no black-and-white film stock, no supernatural involvement in the plot. The color palette bears a vague resemblance to the too-muted-to-be-brights-but-too-sharp-to-be-pastels palette of Edward Scissorhands, but the bulk of the film was shot on-location in Hawaii and San Francisco; those are real colors we’re seeing, not the in-your-face sets we’re assaulted with in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Dark Shadows. In fact, the only concession Burton makes to his usual quirky style is the choice to show Margaret Keane hallucinating big-eyed customers in the grocery store, after she sees a huge display of her artwork--with her husband’s name on it--and realizes that her lies are catching up to her. Even here Burton keeps it concise, with only a few shots of the imagined big eyes. He resists the pull to pile on the cheese, and maybe for some fans that will be a major disappointment. For this fan, however, it was welcome relief. Like I said earlier: Burton is at his best when he’s not trying too hard.
The performances in the film are nothing short of astounding. The first time a director works with a new actor is hard. I know from experience that nothing is more comforting than having your close friends on-set, so I can only imagine how nerve-wracking it must have been for Burton to step outside his comfort zone and make a film without Johnny Depp by his side--but the payoff, oh, my God, the payoff is incredible. Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz have an intense, almost electric chemistry that creates a twofold effect: in the first half we are so rooting for them even though we know (or at least suspect) that Walter Keane is, not to sugarcoat or anything, totally full of shit; in the second half we are genuinely frightened for Margaret when Walter shows his true colors. I have heard Waltz’s performance scorned as “cartoonish,” but I honestly believe it is the best performance I have ever seen him turn in. For those of you who saw Django Unchained, imagine if Dr. King Schultz suddenly and violently went right the hell off the deep end--that’s about what Waltz’s Walter Keane looks like, and it’s hilarious--but it is also terrifying. Few actors can walk the fine line and pull off such a twisted performance. Waltz is one of them.
I mentioned earlier that Amy Adams has the difficult task of bringing to life a character that others have labeled as “passive.” But I’m honestly not sure what movie they were watching, because the woman I saw on that screen was anything but passive. There are moments where she seems swept away by Walter’s charm, or tempted by the money--and perhaps she genuinely is, but every decision she makes, including the one to allow Walter to take credit for her work, is for the good of her daughter. Think about it: she marries him not because she’s wildly in love, but because she needs a husband and provider in order to keep custody of her child. She leaves him eventually not because she can’t stand to put up with his crap anymore, but because he threatens to hurt Jane. She doesn’t enjoy lying to the rest of the world, but she can stand it--but after outright lying to her daughter, she goes to Confession because she feels so guilty. And the way Adams plays this allows little room for any other interpretation. Sure, you could assume she’s just a naive, whining idiot. But that little smirk in the courtroom when they’re about to have the paint-off? Yeah, that’s not the smiling of a naive idiot. That’s the look of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s a subtle character arc, to be sure, but it’s certainly more believable than the zero-to-badass transitions that most “strong female characters” are forced through.
In the end, what makes Big Eyes so beautiful isn’t the fact that it’s the most understated Burton film since Ed Wood, or the not-so-subtle feminist undertones. It’s the way that Burton demonstrates his understanding of the sad truth that unfortunately, innovation is not always rewarded, not at the opportune time at least. The critical response to Margaret’s paintings mirrors the critical response to Burton’s films. Critics, it seems, do not care about the emotional response to the art. They care about whether it’s objectively “good.” This is what Margaret deals with, this is what Burton deals with--and as such he understands that it is what young artists deal with every day of their lives. While we are trying to develop a style of our own, we are pelted with that’s not good enoughs and it’s too simplistics and I don’t understands and you really should give up on that idea, you’ll never make its.
Big Eyes is one of those lovely, not-quite-rare-but-not-quite-frequent Burton films that is as satisfying emotionally as it is visually. And take the leap with me here or not, I don’t care, but you’ll never convince me that this film is not essentially Tim Burton’s love letter to all those young artists out there who look up to him. Big Eyes, to those artists, is his way of saying, it is good enough, it is as complex as it needs to be, I understand, don’t you effing dare give up on that idea, you will only make it if you try.
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