Beyond the Canvas

The painter Margaret Keane – Big Eyes, the new Tim Burton joint, tells us – was...is a most conventional sort of rule-breaking artist and individual.

Margaret’s sitch is remarkable because, as a woman of the ’50s, she defied tradition time and time again for her family, and because, as a prolific painter, she played by a set of regulations that applied only to her but that ultimately would affect a community.

The art community.

Why? Because she (indirectly) lied about her art.

No, Margaret Keane wasn’t a fraud. She didn’t not paint her famous big eye waifs. She very much did, in fact.

But, see, she did let her second husband, Walter, a shyster of the first order, take the credit for them. Not ’cause she wanted to but ’cause she wasn’t yet ready to stand up for herself as an artist and ’cause he made her believe that was her only choice.

No one, Walter would say to her, would buy lady art.

Funny thing is, no one would buy one of his paintings, either.

Ah, yes. Walter was a bit of a painter, too (or so the man claimed). Cityscapes were his thing, though – but let’s just say that his talent was more than questionable. So when his work failed to take San Francisco by storm (the City by the Bay is the setting of Big Eyes) and hers did, Walter began to pass Margaret's work as his own. And while this didn’t sit well with her from the get-go, she wrapped her head around the notion, for it meant being a provider for her daughter, meaningfully, for the first time in her life. It made every against-the-grain thing she’d done until then worth it.

Margaret was a brave woman, but she also didn’t know just how strong she was. Krysten Ritter plays her free spirit of a sole friend in the film; she pops up to champion and challenge her as best she can, but Margaret – as we see her during the first two thirds of the film – isn’t at a stage in her life where she can hear her pal, knowwhatImean. Only after a decade of marriage – once Walter has hindered her every effort to develop as an individual and an artist, threatened her and her daughter, and she’s become a Jehovah’s Witness – does she defy him and risk losing it all.

My bad. What I’ve not told ya is the Keanes had built an empire by then. Thanks to Walter’s knack for shameless, unstoppable self-promotion, “their” work had turned into a lucrative sensation, which called for her original paintings to be mass-produced as pictures and postcards.

What had started as a little white lie gave way to a scam far beyond her control. And the art world would never be the same because of it.

The film – with Amy Adams as Margaret and Christoph Waltz as Walter – tells the story of how an artist reclaimed authorship over her work and of how a woman went and established herself, once and for all, as her own person at a time in which she wasn’t encouraged/expected/appreciated to.

Five-time Academy Award nominee Adams (already Golden Globe-nominated for this role) plays Margaret in yet another tour-de-force turn in a film that is not without faults. If lately, it seems, Hollywood actresses often go and complain about the dearth of strong female parts out there (and Margaret Keane is meaty material), this film suffers from an imbalance of focus.

Adams’ role is super-well-developed, to the detriment of the rest of the production. Waltz as Walter is, indeed, miscast – his Germanic energy proves too much for the barely telegraphed background of the person he portrays and it ultimately proves confusing (for the record: the real-life Walter Keane was from Nebraska, whereas his on-screen persona has a distracting Euro vibe that leaves ya wondering).

The point of the film is Margaret’s trajectory, and Burton & Co. acquit themselves rather nicely with their chronicle. Their Margaret Keane was conventional, even at her least conventional: she was the good little wife until she realized needn't be anymore. Which means that, even at her most rogue, she navigated an environment that was controlled.

For a film about a woman who was such a disruptor, Big Eyes feels awfully safe.

Surely, the real Margaret Keane was more of a force to be reckoned with than that which we are led to believe she was. For my buck, it is a disservice to showcase her in this light, even it means that Adams, strong as ever, will get some deserved attention.

That, unfortunately, seems to be the main goal of this one. 

My Rating **1/2

Photo: MovieFanatic.com.