Jamie Turner80
Member
37 messages
joined Jul 2009
Tim Burton has, perhaps for the first, second, or even third time, attempted to tackle a subject with actual weight. For the first instance, we have a completely serious film, stripped of his usual visual extravaganzas. Secondly, we have a biopic, though Big Eyes is significantly more "straight" than Ed Wood. Thirdly, there is an attempt to convey a message rather than merely providing mindless entertainment—assuming one counts Planet of the Apes as a sincere effort rather than a mere exploitation of the original novel and Schaffner's film. The crux of the matter is that Burton simply does not seem accustomed to being serious, and it shows.
On the whole, this is your run-of-the-mill biographical drama about a painter with a relatively modest background (some unremarkable art school in the Midwest) whose primary claim to fame was painting figurative works during an era dominated by abstraction. Her marriage to Walter is nothing out of the ordinary either; we have seen countless stories of such unions between a capable, salt-of-the-earth woman and a con artist on film, television, and those ubiquitous true crime channels. To be fair, even Burton's approach lacks originality. Perhaps it is unique only because the film isn't even remotely gothic and bears no resemblance to his animated style, aside from Margaret's paintings, but Big Eyes serves as a textbook example of a biographical film churned out at the tail end of award season.
The core of the issue might lie in this "gothic" persona he maintains. Much like Burton's films, gothic culture is visually interesting in its own idiosyncratic way, yet ultimately superficial. It often lacks both wisdom and sincerity, functioning as little more than performance and style. It seems Burton knows how to work with a specific type of actor, but Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz do not fall into that category. Regardless, Big Eyes stands as an exceptionally unsuccessful experiment for Burton.
more at:
http://film-na-dan.blogspot.com/2015/01/big-eyes.html
