Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terrance Stamp, Jon Polito, James Saito, Guido Furlani, Madeleine Arthur, Delaney Raye.
True life is a far stranger ideal than fiction could ever hope to emulate and perhaps one of the most complex of lives and relationships of the 20th Century was between the supremely talented Margaret Keane and her plagiarist, obscenely greedy and mentally abusive ex-husband, Walter Keane.
If true life is one in which might not believed then it takes a master story-teller and great director to bring that tale to the forefront of cinema audience’s imagination and in Tim Burton’s latest film, Big Eyes, the scandal of the one of the greatest frauds in the American art world suddenly becomes accessible and endearing, even psychologically interesting at what makes certain people believe they can get away with the most obvious lie.
It seems a shame that no matter how many great films, and to be fair to the Director, some of them have become cult classics, Tim Burton makes he will always be judged in many eyes between perhaps the two extremes of the tremendous first two Batman films starring Michael Keaton, as well as the outrageously funny Beetlejuice and the sincere Alice In Wonderland and that of arguably one of the worst films of the last 50 years, the so called re-imagining of Planet of the Apes. It always seems to come as a surprise to the system that any film since that woeful and almost too cruel to the sanity of the audience showing should ever be greeted with glowing enthusiasm.
However, and it is testament to the tremendous vision and courage of Tim Burton that one huge slip in over 30 years has not seen his light diminish and Big Eyes certainly sits closer to the top of that directorial tree than it does towards its bottom.
Whether it helps having the joyful Amy Adams in the film and aided tremendously by the equally fascinating Christoph Waltz and the near acting royalty of Terrance Stamp and the comic timing of Jason Schwartzman and Jon Polito to work with, only perhaps the Gods of Cinema can answer, but it has to be said that it certainly has done no harm.
Amy Adams is to cinema in the 21st Century as to what Doris Day was in the middle half of the 20th Century, a bankable and very reliable star who will give all to the camera without ever once taking an audience for granted. The major difference between the two incredible women is that of perspective and willingness to take on more grittier roles when required. This is the difference between watching the likes of Amy Adams and Scarlett Johannson over other less than enjoyable but more up their own belief system certain other female actors of a certain age in Hollywood.
The interaction between Ms. Adams and Christoph Waltz could be seen as flattering, but it is of a gratifying nature in which both rise to each other’s very high standards and takes them another stage further. In this Big Eyes is a qualified success, for the huge cast and of course for Mr. Burton.
Big Eyes is just such an exquisite film, that despite some of its more unsavoury aspects, the audience cannot but help but revel in the overall big picture and the restoration of justice.
Ian D. Hall