Big Eyes (2014)

How sad is this?

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I've said time and again that Tim Burton's dark quirkiness can be quite grating. But never has he made a movie so sorely missing it than Big Eyes. If you've seen any kind of biopic, you've already seen Big Eyes. Anyone could've made this film. If you didn't tell me who directed it, I would've never guessed Tim Burton. A wonderfully twisted world is waiting to be explored from Margaret Keane's haunting paintings, but that world is never discovered. Amy Adams is always a striking cinematic figure, but Burton doesn't allow her to bring that much life or personality into Margaret Keane. Christoph Waltz is Walter Keane and unfortunately this is his least convincing role. Hard to believe and even harder to watch, Waltz chews up the scenery, but brings no nuance to Walter Keane, other than being manic and insecure. He has captured the silver screen as a cold-blooded Nazi and a cunning bounty hunter, but playing an everyday schnook proves to be too oppressive for Waltz. I wasn't moved or engaged. The opportunity for a feminist revenge tale is hinted at early on, but the film gives up on it halfway through.

"Big Eyes" tells the real-life story of painter Margaret Keane and how she was trapped by a marriage in the worst way: She was stripped of her name and artistic identity through her husband's lies. Tim Burton previously made one of the best films about the artistic struggle with "Ed Wood" and he touches upon similar themes here. Like how "Ed Wood" flips the traditional artistic biopic formula on its head, "Big Eyes" is cleverly inverted here: Instead of portraying the joy of art, the film takes on the trappings of a psychological thriller with Amy Adams's constantly on the precipice of losing everything through the unraveling of a single lie.The film is a departure from Tim Burton's usual Gothic style but it has shadings of the characters he's drawn to in both Walter and Amy. They're both outsiders who respond to their distance to the mainstream art world in different ways. In this way, this is a much more adult work than say "Corpse Bride" or "Alice in Wonderland." The film is egregiously mislabelled as a comedy by organizations such as the Golden Globes (and even some of the other IMDb reviews). The closest it comes to comedic is Walter Keane's sense of self-delusion. That characterization, however, is an important plot point, and ignoring that is a sign that perhaps Burton's reputation prevents the film from being taken as seriously as it should.

A portrait of the real-life Keanes, San Francisco married couple of the late 1950s and '60s: Walter is a braggart and storyteller (i.e., a good liar) who is masterful at promoting his wife Margaret's paintings of saucer-eyed waifs--but when it comes down to turning the spotlight on the actual artist, he seizes an early opportunity to take credit for the work himself, even though he has absolutely no artistic talent. A study of ego, delusion and, that old standby, how success destroys a marriage, each theme taking precedence over the process of artistic creation. Tim Burton directed, and was obviously more interested in Walter's preening self-importance and Hollywood hobnobbing than in Margaret's inspirations (she churns out paintings--off-camera--at a rapid pace). Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams are unconvincing as the Keanes, neither able to overcome Burton's uncomfortable imbalance of moods gleaned from Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski's curiously thin screenplay. As a movie about art, "Big Eyes" is surely a failure, with a timeline presented to us in shorthand. Viewers attracted by the picture's nostalgic trimmings--as a jaunt back in time to a simpler era--might enjoy it, even though the family dynamics are a mess and Waltz's larger-than-life portrayal gets more annoying as the film progresses. *1/2 from ****

Big Eyes: a must see movie for all female fighters because it could happen, if it didn't happen already and also because its a true story. It starts with a love bound created between Margaret and Keane two amateur painters, an unconditional love. They started to help each other to succeed as professional painters but after a while Keane found out that her talent overcome his so he started to focus on selling her work with his own name on it. When she started to feel that he is not helping her but he is helping only himself she went for advice but she came back with nothing and continued on painting with the name of her husband. Finally a critic appears played by one of the greatest British actors Terence Stamp to change her course of her life forever to give herself a chance for redemption, to take her own advice rather than others and to stop thinking about Keane and because he is weak he threatens to kill her so she ran away and with the help of her daughter which acted through the whole movie as a wake-up call, finally Margaret stand against Keane and at the end her talent proved him wrong in-front of everyone. On a second thought this movie is not only for female fighters, its also for anyone who thinks that talent could be stolen cause it could be borrowed but never stolen. Big Eyed people will somehow try to kill your talent but not for long cause your talent will find a way to prevail. One important thing in this movie there is a lot of Oscar nominations and winners from cast and crew.