Big Eyes: Burton's Grotesque Take On The 60s

If you're old enough to remember those "big eyes" paintings of sad-looking youngsters then you recall the height of 1960s kitsch.
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of polyester pants, plastic-covered furniture and lots of pink and yellow and turquoise.
Cars, kitchens and baths were decidedly two-toned and cookie-cutter tract suburban housing was the norm.
This is the world of Big Eyes, the new Tim Burton movie that stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. Adams is Margaret Keane, the real artist (and abused wife) behind the big eyes paintings while Waltz plays her husband, the conniving abuser who markets the paintings and takes all the credit for them.
Like many hot movies right now, it's all based on a true story.
This is Keane's story of struggle, empowerment and respectability as she fights for the credit and the bucks that are due her for her art and her life. In that sense, this is also in many ways the story of the women's movement. We did say "empowerment," didn't we? So, you could call this a "women's movie" and, to be sure, none of the men depicted in the film are very trustworthy.
Waltz's character is a pathological liar and a total jerk. Ditto, Margaret Keane's first husband who forces her to flee. On top of that, Jason Schwartzman plays a money-grubbing, pretentious art dealer while while Danny Huston appears as an unscrupulous, manipulative gossip columnist and Terrance Stamp portrays a snobbish, arrogant art critic for (You guessed it!) the New York Times.
Like we said, none of the men are admirable.
This is a movie about victimizers and victims.
And at times Burton presents it almost as a comedy. The funny thing is that the film includes dark comedy in a super-bright setting with shrill colors. It's like someone decided to dabble in film noir but in the bright sunlight of California and Hawaii, complete with a creepy Burtonesque scene where Margaret Keane is out shopping and suddenly the eyes of everyone she encounters are grotesquely huge.
And against all this, Adam's skin tone is so pale that she almost disappears. Indeed, she has to fight for her right to stay relevant (both literally and figuratively) and she does a helluva job. No wonder she won the Golden Globe!
Still, it's hard to imagine how a working woman in the 1960s (who has already gathered the gumption to leave one husband) could have been this powerless or this stupid. And the final courtroom scenes are laughable.
To be sure, Waltz does an OK job of playing the cad in this thankless role but one wonders why he retains an accent when he's playing an American. Huston is appropriately cynical and Stamp is wonderfully officious.
Hey, this is probably better than the Jedi or Taken3 or Wedding Ringers, that's for sure.
And whether you actually lived through the 60s or not you might have fun viewing the era's styles, places, characters and events through the eyes of an inventive director and a truly fine actress.