Big Eyes

Tim Burton’s ‘Big Eyes’ is missing the gender politics and humor that would vitalize Margaret Keane’s story.

BigEyesPosterA woman is carefully studying one of Margaret Keane’s paintings of a waif like child with big eyes in a state of poverty and despair. She says, “It’s creepy, maudlin and amateurish. And I love it.”

Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes” tells the story of Margaret Keane, but his film only meets the last two criteria of Margaret’s paintings. “Big Eyes” feels like a standard biopic placed in a maudlin setting, but it lacks the surreal, absurd, cartoonish character that has defined even some of Burton’s worst films. In the process, he loses the humor, wit and even political point of view necessary to make good on Margaret’s story.

Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) was a painter in the ‘50s and ‘60s who attained enormous success with her “Big Eye” paintings. All portraits of children, the moody sketches were pure kitsch and possibly art, but regardless, they sold like hotcakes. Reproduced countless times over, it became possible to buy a Keane at your local grocery store.

The only problem was that Margaret saw none of the attention for her work. Her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) convinced her that the work would sell better if people thought that it came from a man, so he took credit for himself and eventually became an established artist hobnobbing with Andy Warhol and being torn to shreds in the New York Times. Once the lie and Big Eye empire were established, Walter convinced Margaret that if she were to ever reveal the truth, the whole enterprise would come crashing down. Margaret remained silent for years until a circus of a legal battle in which Walter still claimed he was the sole painter of the Big Eyes.

Immediately Margaret’s story brings to mind women’s rights and what it means to be a female artist either in 1960 or 2015. Burton however doesn’t seem to have a political bone in his body, and he comments as little about the present as he does the past, seeking only to tell Margaret’s story in traditional terms.

Burton also misses an opportunity to take the courtroom material and make it truly outrageous. At one point Walter acts as both his own prosecutor and witness, leaping up and down from the stand with aplomb and play-acting the stereotypes he’s seen on old Perry Masons. Waltz executes the scene with charm, but he’s an actor who can go further, and Burton doesn’t ask him to, playing the moment mostly straight and not technically for laughs. The historical details of Margaret’s story are seedier and more outrageous than Burton even thinks to portray, something that seems peculiar given just how kooky and dark Burton can make established properties like Batman, Alice in Wonderland or the soap opera Dark Shadows.

Even bigger questions of truth, forgery and art seem to linger as untouched subjects. Something like “American Hustle” worked the idea of forgery into the very fabric of its storytelling. Even one of Burton’s best films, “Ed Wood”, explored the idea of whether even the worst art can still be called genius. Why can’t “Big Eyes” make a bigger claim about the nature of art, and how even kitsch and sentimental pap can still move people in a way that makes it art?

Keane’s art was all of those things but seemed weird enough to suggest there was an artist under those layers of canvas. “Big Eyes” amounts to little more than its surface level appeal.

2 ½ stars

Dark Shadows

I didn’t know “Dark Shadows” was based on a soap opera until my friend amusingly explained this: “It was this kind of boring soap opera that no one watched until one season they introduced a vampire to the show and everyone’s minds just exploded.”

The problem then with Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” is its inability to just make my mind explode.
Burton has always been a unique director. It’s possible that none of his films can be strictly classified into one genre, and “Dark Shadows” is no different. This one begins on a note of period piece horror fantasy with scents of the original “Dracula” in the film’s gorgeous CGI iconography.

This opening takes place in 1772 with the Collins family establishing a thriving colony on the American coastline. The son Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is cursed by the witch Angelique (Eva Green) when he gives up her for his true love, Josette (Bella Heathcote). Angelique turns Barnabas into a vampire and imprisons him for 200 years, only to wake up in the swinging 1970s. Now Barnabas returns to his surviving ancestors and fights to rebuild the family business, taking down Angelique, also now two centuries old and running strong, in the process.

The fish-out-of-water game is old-hat no matter what setting or mythical creature you put into the formula, and although Depp revels in manipulating everything with an elegantly antiquated misunderstanding of modern technology, slang and etiquette, Burton never knows how to own any of these jokes.

The film and its dialogue constantly teeter on understated comedy and a haunted house ghost movie without ever dipping into campy, absurd or soapy territory. Burton will instead play an Alice Cooper song or some other ‘70s rock staple to suggest the change of tone, and the film never has go for broke laughs or campy charm. Continue reading “Dark Shadows”

Alice in Wonderland (2011)

Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” remake isn’t as clever as “Avatar” with its use of 3-D and suffers from a sad third act.

Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” may be a very faithful adaptation of the Lewis Carroll novels. But the book is “Through the Looking Glass,” not Through the Victorian Oil Painting. Wonderment has never been this tedious.

When Alice (Mia Wasikowska) falls down the rabbit hole, this time at the age of 19, she arrives in Underland, convinced this is a new place to her despite the numerous dreams she had of what she called Wonderland when she was a child. The stock of Carroll heroes including a smoking caterpillar, talking flowers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat, a feisty mouse, the white rabbit and of course the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) all debate whether she is the right Alice. If so, she is destined to slay a dragon-like monster called the Jabberwocky, remove the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) from power and return Underland to its once glorious state under the rule of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).

The trick with adapting this story, as it has been done so many times before, is clarifying that it is not a kid’s story. Doing so opens it up to a whole new level development flaws. Aside from not being a cartoonish experience full of joy and wonder, Alice is an uninteresting straight-man put through a series of increasingly quirky and odd encounters with one-dimensional characters. Continue reading “Alice in Wonderland (2011)”

Rapid Response: Ed Wood

Ed Wood is considered the worst director who ever lived. He held this title for so long, and it wasn’t until recently that my generation has established new cult heroes of awful cinema such as Tommy Wisseau and Uwe Boll and seem to have forgotten Wood somewhat. Beyond that, there is a belief that “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is actually not the worst film ever made but one of the BEST films ever made, that it’s awful sets, performances and effects and complete disregard for continuity was all brilliantly intentional and ironic. Only in the 21st century would such a mindset develop.

It doesn’t help that Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood,” despite being released in his heyday of the ’90s, despite being one of his most critically acclaimed films and despite starring his eternal frontman Johnny Depp, is one of his least known films amongst the many Burton fanboys still agreeing how great “Alice in Wonderland” was (it’s not).

In this film, Burton doesn’t necessarily vindicate Wood as a genius, but he is sympathetic to him, and he recognizes a certain level of genius (albeit one that doesn’t indicate something “good”) in him absent from most other directors of all time. Depp infuses Wood with a sheer level of optimism and grinning credulity for everything around him, and such was the way Wood directed his movies, in love with every shot and every line of dialogue as a work of art. It’s not that he was blind to his own failure as well as other’s greatness. In his mind, everyone was great.

The film is hilarious, one of my favorite lines being, “Aren’t you a fag? What? No, I’m just a transvestite.” Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, who starred in numerous Wood films, is terrific, as is Bill Murray as an arguably odd and unnecessary character, Bunny Breckenridge. The black and white cinematography has that great ’50s B-Movie vibe, and the scenes in which they recreate “Plan 9 from Outer Space” are priceless in their precision to the film (which I’ve seen, and yes, it is terrible in an amazing way).

I’m not sure on the accuracy of the film historically, but it’s great fun and actually one of Burton’s best.