Big Eyes (2014)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Soul Windows

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The current movie season has been riddled with true stories and biographies, most of them treated with seriousness and reverence in anticipation of award glory. Tim Burton's Big Eyes, a biopic of painter Margaret Keane, separates itself from the pack in a prickly, delightful way.

Opening Christmas Day, Big Eyes tells the strange story of Margaret (Amy Adams), who paints waifs with oversized orbs.

In the 1960s, newly separated from her husband and with a daughter to support, she moves to a quirky, lively, pastel-coated San Francisco and starts selling her paintings in street craft fairs.

There she meets Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz). Exuberant and charming, he's a great salesman, just what the shy, introverted Margaret needs.

They marry and Margaret begins to sign her works with her new married name, Keane. During a potential sale, Walter tells a small, white lie and takes credit for one of the "big eyes" paintings.

The lie spins hideously out of control. The paintings become enormously successful and the secret must be kept at all costs. Margaret stays stuck in a secret studio where she meekly, glumly churns out new paintings while Walter comes up with increasingly maniacal new schemes.

Of course, things come tumbling down and the movie climaxes in 1970 at an amazing trial. We learn that the real Keane is currently in her eighties, still painting, and living in Napa.

Danny Huston plays Dick Nolan, the real-life San Francisco Examiner columnist who writes about the Keanes and who narrates the bizarre story.

Funny, weird, and disturbing while still feeling truthful, Big Eyes is Burton's most grown-up work to date.

Without abandoning his personal vision, it presents a deliriously twisted view of domestic life in the 1960s and 1970s, and still deals with a difficult, complex adult relationship.

While Amy Adams qualifies as one of Burton's usual willowy blondes (Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands, Patricia Arquette in Ed Wood, etc.), she beautifully conveys a passionate inner life, and a crippling lack of self-esteem and self-worth.

Waltz's character nicely fits with some of Burton's energetic creator characters (Ed Wood, Jack Skellington), except that he's the ironic opposite; he's really a monster and he doesn't actually create anything.

The movie was written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who also wrote Burton's best film, Ed Wood; they have a true touch for unusual biography.

Together, the trio captures a kind of "Amazing Stories" vibe, but rooted in human pain and beauty, with a view through the windows of the soul.