Is it possible to speak of mass-produced art in the sense of high art? It’s not an exceptionally fresh question, but surely one that lurks underneath the skin of Big Eyes, a biopic of Margaret Keane, an American artist with completely polarizing work, and an interesting horror tale of her history with Walter Keane. Similar to Ed Wood, it is drunken history rather than in depth biography with the storytelling head repeatedly aiming for the quick and easy way culminating in flying far out of any realism. Which is in itself not a negative, but the way Burton tackles this peculiar tale, it has to be a lot more technical, and even overdone that there is some unsatisfying suspension of disbelief as the narrative continues.
Keane’s main theme was ‘orphan’ girls with big sad inquisitive eyes. Her endeavors up till this period could be classified as average at best. Things took a drastic turn in the 1960s, when her husband Walter, now estranged from Margaret, began to exploit her drawings and claim credit for them. This kind of dynamics is what the film revolves on, however it is highly surprising that there is very little regard for their dynamics in the film. A viewer easily sympathizes with Margaret, hates Walter, but the drama doesn’t go beyond the surface for the most part.
We see Margaret at the beginning of the movie on her way out of her apartment leaving her first husband to move to San Francisco hoping to pursue her art career. However, soon enough, another man, who had been biding his time, gets to her. The meek, submissive Margaret has been captivatingly portrayed by Amy Adams while the vibrant, handsome Walter has been captivatingly played by Christoph Waltz. Edwin is particularly effective in the quieter, more complex of the two roles that he takes on. The same goes for how the character Margaret Keane was, which is why the majority of her concerns are internal and consist more of unvoiced emotions than words and dialogues. He does well, especially at the start, when given a chance to be the boisterous, garrulous hustler who compliments Margaret’s bathroom paintings outside a hot San Francisco club. He expresses some of the redeeming qualities of a grossly inefficient as well as endearing.
Again, this is one of those traditionally dramatic stories, where the man beats his spouse, but as expected, advances within the story, the dramatics of the domestic abuse are somewhat noticeable and the movie at that point wants to deepen a bit more than that: essentially this is a tale of a man who treats his wife as a whore, silence in the bedroom and many women. Now, this is where the film goes off the rails. Melodrama is one of the few things it does well, so if it can’t do it for serious reasons, it does it in order to make fun of it like in the very funny courtroom sequence, the final installment that wraps the film. This one, however, leaves a little exploration of the more weighty concerns of peccadilloes concerning the Keane marriage, but then again as I pointed these facts out at the beginning, this is more or less a biographer’s lament rather than a comprehensive biography.
The confidence with which the film deals with the idea of mass-produced art is more prominent here, especially in terms of how Burton uses it to speak about himself and his work. What if something is mass produced, will it be de called art? For example, if a hundred copies of the painting are made, is the painting itself still valuable? There is no lecturing about it, with the suggestions just planted for eliciting thoughts from the audience. At times, there are some flashbacks of what Burton’s presence must have felt – for he is a’reuniting, brut’ everyartist in him today who faced that his artwork was proliferated. Just think of the disappointment that must have been out, where there are endless racks full of clothes, mugs and plates, toys and undersized action figures all bedecked with Jack Skellington. There is a friction that Burton exposes in terms of the empathy that each one of them expresses towards Keane’s situation. In other scenes, there are other untidy moments as the characters played by Terence Stamp, a pretentious critic, and Jason Schwartzman, an empty lone art dealer, both give pleasant but ridiculous performances that appear more suited to the touch of the film than its context. Much worse is Danny Houston as a rather ridiculous narrator, who pops up every now and then to continue the storytelling, attempt is another thing that does not blend well with definite parts of the film.
Judgment
Big Eyes is a riveting and highly engaging film tackling the themes of art and its ownership of it. However, there is a lack of a coherent perspective. One moment it aims to treat it as nonsense and fill the stage with over-the-top parodies, then no sooner been achieved, there is a contemplation of the Keane marriage and an in-depth examination of the pathology of that marriage. It cannot attend to both facets and thus the drama is compromised at the end.
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