Tuesday 15 December 2015

MOVIE MONDAY - BIG EYES

“Time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them.” - Norodom Sihanouk

Movie Monday is late this week because I have been extremely busy with work… I have had to present several seminars to a visiting Chinese delegation and today was the last session which was perhaps the most gruelling of all. Of course I speak no Chinese at all, and all of my sessions were being translated by an interpreter. This is quite an amazing thing and takes a little getting used to. There must be a change of pace involved, but as I developed a rapport with the interpreter, the lectures went very well.

Last Sunday we watched the Tim Burton 2014 movie “Big Eyes” starring Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter and Terence Stamp. The film is based on a true story, set in San Francisco in the 1950s. Amy Adams plays the role of Margaret Keane, an artist responsible for the very popular and characteristic portraits of children with big eyes that were the hallmark of the 1960s.

Margaret is a woman trying to make it on her own after leaving her husband with only her daughter and her paintings. She meets the attractive, gregarious ladies’ man and fellow painter Walter Keane in a park while she is struggling to make an impact with her drawings of children with big eyes. The two quickly become a pair with outgoing Walter selling their paintings and quiet Margaret holed up at home painting even more children with big eyes. But Walter’s actually selling her paintings as his own. A clash of financial success and critical failure soon sends Margaret reeling in her life of lies. With Walter still living the high life, Margaret's going to have to try making it on her own again and re-claiming her name and her paintings.

The film was a rather simple coverage of the life of Margeret Keane, which looks beautiful (a very stunning and authentic view of the 1960s), but somehow one way or another fails to satisfy. Both Amy Admas and Christoph Waltz play very well, but they lack depth and come across as somewhat two-dimensional and cartoonish. A pleasant enough film, with good cast and a story that had the potential to be more that it was. We weren’t bored and the film was entertaining enough, however, it lacked sparks and fire, and certainly there was no signature Tim Burton magic in it…

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