Big Eyes

For F*** Magazine

BIG EYES

Director : Tim Burton

Cast : Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp

Genre : Drama

Run Time : 106 mins

Opens : 29 January 2015

It was the 1960s and Margaret Keane’s hypnotic paintings of the doe-eyed waifs captured the imagination of the world, but for a long time, nobody knew the dark truth behind these depictions of innocence. After separating from her husband Frank, Margaret (Adams) takes her young daughter Jane (Delaney Raye) to San Francisco. There, she meets and quickly falls hard for Walter Keane (Waltz), seemingly also a passionate painter. Margaret and Walter marry and after Margaret’s unique “Big Eye” paintings garner attention, Walter begins to take credit for them. Soon, the paintings are everywhere, mass-reproduced and sold in supermarkets and gas stations, with Walter making television appearances and hobnobbing with celebrities, everyone believing him to be the true artist. As Walter grows more domineering, making Margaret fear for her own safety, she finally tells the world the truth as the couple battles it out in court to determine proper credit.

            Big Eyes marks director Tim Burton’s first biopic since 1994’s Ed Wood, re-teaming him with that film’s writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. It’s been repeatedly noted that this is Burton’s first live-action film since 1996’s Mars Attacks! without either Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter.  A project like Big Eyes is exactly what Burton needs and it is perhaps not entirely coincidental that this film about artistic integrity comes from a director once lauded as a fresh, unique voice but who has become something of a parody of himself. The film still bears many of Burton’s signature touches and the heightened stylisation proves to be a double-edged sword even when it’s consciously scaled down. While the saturated colour palette and the Stepford Wives-style depiction of a suburban idyll that becomes a personal prison add panache to the proceedings, they also hamper the authenticity of the true story.

            We’ve all heard stories of artists being taken advantage of and the Margaret and Walter Keane case is one of an artist being taken advantage of in the extreme. Burton establishes a sense of unease throughout and writers Alexander and Karaszewski manage to play on the audience’s knowledge of how things went down in a general, such that we know where it’s all headed but anticipate and dread it in equal measure as Walter’s lie snowballs. Production designer Rick Heinrichs and Burton’s usual costume designer Colleen Atwood create an immersive period-accurate milieu tinged with that kitschy Burton flair. The music video for Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun comes to mind. While the film’s tone is not as uneven as it could’ve been, one still gets the feeling that characters such as Margaret’s friend DeAnn (Ritter) and snobbish gallery owner Ruben (Schwartzman) have been written in only to provide requisite comic relief in what really is an emotionally-heavy film, though it has been described as a “comedy-drama”.

            Amy Adams’ name has popped up on various “Oscar snubs” lists and it’s easy to see why. Adams ably embodies the quiet dignity of the character, shying away from showy bursts of emotion, her performance all the more affecting for it. An artist’s personal attachment to his or her work is a difficult sentiment to convey, but the way Adams plays it, one really feels that when credit for the Big Eye paintings is snatched from Margaret, it’s as if one of her own children has been taken from her. The film makes no bones about being a feminist statement and Adams’ Margaret is very sympathetic and easy to root for.

            Christoph Waltz brings his trademark wildfire charisma to the role of Walter Keane, effortlessly essaying a smug, charming manipulator with flair to spare. While magnetic and watchable, Waltz does veer dangerously close to the cartoony side of things when Walter lashes out at Margaret, as if he’s practising for his upcoming Bond villain role. His portrayal of the abusive, controlling husband here is near-identical to the performance he delivered as the abusive, controlling husband in Water for Elephants. Journalist Dick Nolan (Danny Huston) observes “subtle doesn’t sell”, and Waltz seems to have taken that to heart. All that said though, he’s a much better fit for the part than Ryan Reynolds, who was attached to the film at one point, would’ve been.

             Big Eyes sets itself apart from the prestige biopic pack with a deliberately cloying aesthetic, director Burton expressing the idea that ugliness can lurk beneath the surface of beautiful things. In focusing on Margaret and Walter’s relationship, Big Eyes seems to side-step challenging discussions about the role art plays in society which, when viewed through the lens of a period film, could have been especially thought-provoking. While still impactful and moving, this approach strips the material of some of the rawness and honesty it requires and ultimately, Big Eyes doesn’t dig deep enough.

Summary: A domestic abuse drama tinged with queasy stylisation, Big Eyes has Tim Burton deviating from his now-tired formula and boasts Amy Adams in top form but suffers slightly from being too simplistic.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

            

The Adjustment Bureau

As published in F*** Magazine, Issue 14 (March 2011)

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

2011 release

Starring: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie

Directed by: George Nolfi

Media Rights Capital/dist. Universal Pictures.

            A topic of discussion that often pops up when philosophy is the subject is that of fate – do we believe that we are solely in control of our lives, or that every move we make has been planned, pre-destined by some sort of higher power or sinister underlying force? A lot of this does sound like pretentious dribble, and films that try to address it often end up as the same – but this one, this one is a wee bit different.

            The film is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story The Adjustment Team. Dick numbers amount the authors who have had the most number of films based on their books and stories. Alas, the man passed away just several months shy of the release of the first one, the seminal classic Blade Runner. Unfortunately, the qualities of these adaptations vary vastly (who can forgive Paycheck, Next or Impostor?), and Blade Runner is often regarded as the best, with Spielberg’s Minority Report a close runner-up.

            Matt Damon plays David Norris, a young, up-and-coming New York politician running for Senate. He is loved by all, until an embarrassing photograph comes to light, published in the New York Post. His numbers fall and he is crushed. Before making his “defeat speech” to concede to the other candidate, he bumps into Elise (Blunt), a slightly kooky but friendly and beautiful dancer. The next day, by sheer coincidence, he meets her again on the bus.

            He is immediately enamoured with the girl, but his life is suddenly turned upside-down by the eponymous Bureau: strange, mysterious men, unclassifiable but for the sake of explanation something like half-angels, half-CIA covert-ops spooks. They seem omniscient but blend into the background, and are all identically dressed in grey suits and a bowler hat. They tell Norris that he was never meant to meet her a second time, and to never meet her again, or the “plan” will fall apart. But Norris is smitten, and proves he will defy anything or anyone to be reunited with Elise – even an all-powerful secret organization.

            At first sight, The Adjustment Bureau seems like it might be an interesting watch, but borrows too many elements from its predecessors, such as the television series Fringe with its bowler hat-wearing “Observers” or Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary, which depicted heavenly angels as policemen. However, The Adjustment Bureau is a beast all its own – a mostly enjoyable, clever and very entertaining beast.

            The main thing that separates The Adjustment Bureau from most films based on P-K-D source material is that this takes place in the present, in a world that is immediately established as real and normal – accomplished effectively by having media figures such as Jon Stewart and Wolf Blitzer appear as themselves, and by putting Norris’ face in publications such as GQ and the New York Post. In a way, this is much like the montage in Iron Man, which showed publications that had featured Tony Stark in the past, including Wired, Esquire and Time. Mainly because of this, The Adjustment Bureau shares a very similar tone to that of Iron Man – it takes place in a world almost exactly like ours, only with a large helping of fantastical, super-high-tech or maybe even supernatural gravy.

            The Adjustment Bureau’s Achilles heel is really its look. There are several cool and iconic images, and the “planner diaries” that the Adjusters use are literal E-books, normal bound paper notebooks except displaying complex computerized “decision trees”, tracking the effect of every move the subject makes. However, many may form expectations of the film based on the image of the mysterious men in suits and hats, just as I did.

            I was quite wrong – a huge part of the movie’s success is the way it handles the characters of the Adjustment Bureau agents. We are used to seeing cold, emotionless and robotic Men-In-Black types, who are everywhere; who can and will do anything. The Bureau agents here however are depicted as mostly regular company men – regular salary guys who have to deal with office politicking and back-biting, meeting deadlines and fulfilling responsibilities, and who need to take holidays too.

            The performances are very solid across the board. Matt Damon is an excellent actor whose specialty is playing the normal, everyday guy with a special talent, gift or skill. Therefore, he is the right choice to play an idealised, almost-perfect Congressman whom everyone immediately loves, and who is genuinely a good man through and through. Emily Blunt is, like Damon, also considered one of the best talents in the industry at the moment. She plays a ballerina, but unlike in Black Swan, she’s mostly a dream girl – quick-witted, intelligent, a tiny bit on the eccentric side and dedicated to her craft.

            There are very few successful films with no real, solid villain – Forrest Gump is the example that quickly comes to mind. The Adjustment Bureau agents seem sinister, but as we get to know them better we learn they’re just doing their jobs. However, along comes senior agent Thompson (Terence Stamp doing what he does best), cold, dangerously effective and amoral. Anthony Mackie, again a rising star with a solid pedigree (best known as Sgt. Sanborn in The Hurt Locker and as the late rap superstar Tupac Shakur in Notorious) puts in marvellous work as Harry; a supporting character who first clues us in to the fact that the Bureau’s agents have the capacity to be scrupulous and some may even have grown a conscience.

            The movie’s main problem is the opposite of that that has plagued a good number of recent blockbusters – it boasts a strong story, very competent writing and intriguing characters, but lacks in the style department. This is a pity as writer/director George Nolfi, co-screenwriter on The Bourne Ultimatum (also a Damon-starring film) and first-time director, has a nose for a good story. The film’s story departs a fair bit from the source material, but so did all the other P-K-D story-based movies – except here, like in Minority Report, it is a wise change of context that makes it a good watch.

            The biggest credit that Nolfi, the filmmakers and the cast deserve is that they took a fantastical, genre-bending paranoid conspiracy thriller and made it extremely relatable to audiences. The dialogue between Elise and David is natural, witty and most of it sounds a lot like how real couples would speak – it was as if Nolfi wrote David’s lines, and his wife/girlfriend wrote Elise’s. Nolfi, armed with a Ph.D in political science, also demonstrates his remarkable aptitude for writing a politician character and arming him with rhetoric-filled speeches and an adoring public.

            Ultimately, it’s a crying shame that The Adjustment Bureau can and will come off to many as run-of-the-mill, boring and forgettable, if mildly interesting. This is a movie that boasts formidable acting talent and a masterful adaptation of a classic short story written by a literary legend – and in the end, it feels like it doesn’t work mainly because the mysterious agents look exactly the same as every one of that kind before. This is actually a good film, and my main advice is to adjust your expectations and enjoy the ride.

RATING: 3.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong