Big Eyes

Waif painter Margaret Keane finally gets his due, courtesy of Tim Burton and Amy Adams

Amy Adams is picture perfect as Margaret Keane, a muffled artist who might have remained just another unfortunate outbreak in 1950 if it did not have the courage to give the boot to his lie husband, Walter (Christoph Waltz ). It was Margaret who painted these portraits sad wrecks, saucer eyes that left the cold art critics. It was Walter who marketed low so-called art of his wife in a jackpot industry. What Margaret was tousled as Walter took credit for painting, and worse for years, she leaves him. "People do not buy art lady," said Walter him.

Big Eyes could have been a Lifetime Movie friendly exploitation of women. It becomes something scrappier, deeper and memorable comedic and touching is due to radiant Adams, who never patron Margaret, and director Tim Burton, who gives the film the brightness of a fable laced with threat . For Burton, Big Eyes is a bookend to his brilliant 1994 movie Ed Wood, also written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and also a monument to kitsch art triumphant.

What is a girl to do? With ex threatening a custody battle, she married Walter, who persuades hungry i nightclub owner Enrico Banducci (Jon Polito) to show Margaret paintings in his famous establishment, right next to the toilet. The work of Margaret really takes off when Walter hit on the idea of ​​selling them at a lower cost, posters and calendars.

The conflict occurs when the runner petticoats Walter becomes increasingly violent and Margaret leaves him, setting up shop in Hawaii, becoming a Jehovah's Witness and spread the truth on a radio in a 1970 interview that she is only painter in the family. All this leads to a hilarious sequence in which test and Margaret inglorious bastard must be painted before the judge. Burton transforms the spectacle of watching Walter squirm in pleasure crowdpleasing without skimping on the human toll taken on a woman forced to lead a life of darkness.

Waltz hams it in high style, though somewhat more restraint would have Margaret seem less deceived fall for a man whose only art is the con. It is Adams, who restores our rooting interest in showing us steel, even in the reserve Margaret. It is a haunting performance transparency.

Clearly Burton sympathize, less irony, with Margaret fervent belief in what one critic called "the great, expired candy" it puts on the canvas. A recent showing of the work of Burton in New York Museum of Modern Art attracted long lines and critical brickbats. Maybe the reason Big Eyes for all its tonal shifts and erratic rhythm, seems like the most personal and sincere film from Burton years, a tribute to the desire that pushes even the most marginalized artist to self-expression, no matter what anyone thinks hell. Walter died in 2000, without the creative output. Margaret, 87, still painting every day Burton gives him the sweetest reward in Big Eyes. the last laugh.