After a quick title sequence featuring prints being made of one of these big eyes paintings, the story begins with words from our narrator, gossip columnist Dick Nolan, that accurately describe the climate of the film; “The ‘50s were a grand time, if you were a man.” We see Margaret rushing to pack a few suitcases and quickly leave her current marriage. She then finds herself in San Francisco, and that’s when our story really takes flight. She meets Walter, marries him quickly, and then the two take the art world by storm, but only Walter receives the credit.

The film managed to remain fairly accurate to the way the events played out. Margaret did meet Walter at an outdoor exhibit in San Francisco, and the paintings did rise to fame after being displayed and sold in a nightclub. This was also the place where Margaret first realized that Walter had been claiming that the paintings were his own. In the movie, Margaret overhears him boasting about the paintings to a group of young ladies, but according to the real Margaret Keane, she realized what was going on when Walter was making sales and someone approached her and asked if she painted as well. Other important aspects of the story remain historically accurate, like Margaret’s reasoning for painting such unique portraits. For Margaret, the classic idea of eyes being windows to the soul combined with a childhood surgery that left her deaf for a period of time is what inspired her to portray her feelings the way she did.

With the film being directed by Tim Burton, you have to expect at least one scene that can be classified as a bit of a trip. To me, although it was a short scene, it stood out more than most in the movie. As her husband gains popularity with the big eyes paintings, Walter decides to make the art as accessible to the public as possible, eventually having prints and post cards for sale around town. Margaret’s simple trip to the corner store turns into a bit of a personal nightmare after seeing the art displayed for sale. As she looks around the store and makes her way to the checkout counter, every person around her begins to appear as her paintings, staring at her with the haunting gaze of those disproportionate eyes.

Amy Adams, the leading lady of the film, does a wonderful job of capturing the southern sweetness and naivety of Margaret. She was just a simple woman looking for a new life with her daughter, having no idea what she was going to get herself into, and how it would affect the world of art. It’s no wonder that Amy Adams ended up receiving a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Margaret in the film. Christoph Waltz does a phenomenal job of portraying the delusional narcissist that Walter was. From the first time we meet him while he’s selling his art outside, we’re charmed by his charisma and charm. As the story develops and we realize just how egotistical he is, we witness Walter slowly losing his sanity, all the way up until his lies unravel in court and he attempts to make pathetic excuses for the last time. Waltz does a wonderful job at portraying the fall of a man who truly believed he was great. In fact, the real Walter Keane stuck to his word and still denied that his wife had created the paintings, all the way up until his death in 2000. 

Women have often been looked at as inferior by men, and that thought is especially evident when women try to make their way into spaces that men feel are their own. The film does a great job of showing the patriarchal climate that always existed in the art world, and just how much damage that environment can do to a woman. Margaret had no idea any of this was going to happen. She found solace in Walter, as he was established in her new city, could help provide for her and her daughter, and charmed her from the moment they first met. He used his personality to his advantage up until Margaret finally had the strength to stand up to him. He threatened her life if she were to come out with the truth, and she still had the bravery to stand up to him in court when the opportunity finally arose. Of course not every scene is perfectly accurate to the way things played out between Margaret and Walter, the film does a wonderful job of portraying the conniving nature of the situation, and allows us to understand all the difficult and overwhelming emotions Margaret was experiencing.  Before I first saw this film years ago I had never heard of Margaret Keane and her story, so I definitely think that producing these films helps to bring awareness to the realities that female artists needed to face. Overall, I think this is a great film that displays the empowerment of a female artist, despite so many difficulties weighing her down on her journey.

It seems fitting that the first shot of the film is that of a printing press hurriedly spitting out images of a big-eyed painting, as it’s through the mass printing of Margaret’s big eyes that Walter conquers not only the popular culture but makes himself known in the elite art world too. As a site of interest for the wealthy middle class, the art market of the 1960s was domineered by an exclusive circle who held what they defined as “art” to incredibly high standards: in an early scene, Walter takes his simple “Sunday paintings” to a hip San Franciscan gallery displaying Expressionist art, only to be told that “People want Kandinsky, or Rothko! They don’t want goopy street scenes”, by owner Ruben (Jason Schwartzman). To become successful, artists created works that conformed to the fashionable trends at the time, even if it wasn’t to their own style, and Walter’s Parisian street scenes just don’t cut the mustard.   Desperate to make money, he hangs his and Margaret’s artworks outside the restrooms of the hungry-I, a popular jazz club,hoping that its wealthy patrons will take an interest, only to find himself rapidly selling all of Margaret’s paintings rather than his own. From then on,Walter invades not only the homes of the middle class by selling the works Margaret secretly paints, but also the world of the local working class, selling posters and postcards to those who can’t afford the real thing. Ruben later sees the duplicated images in a shop window and exclaims: “Christ, it’s a movement!”. Certainly, following the Pop Art movement of the 1950s, it no longer mattered if artwork was tasteful or rose to any academic standards, what was important was its presence in popular culture. People wanted art that was deemed “cool” and trendy in any form, and even if they didn’t have the money to spend on an original, mass print meant they could access it in cheap copies, as Walter tells Margaret: “Folks don’t care if it’s a copy. They just want art that touches them!” Walter is proved right when patrons rush to the gallery to pick up cheap photocopies of the Big Eyes, and he is thrilled knowing he can cater to the wants of both the middle-class art world and the local mainstream audience, as he tells Margaret, “Would you rather sell a $500 painting, or a million cheaply- reproduced posters?!” This moment also suggests that art consumption was now based on trends and profit, rather than any particular talent; no doubt Margaret’s paintings were well done, but it seemed buyers wanted her work because it was immensely popular, not necessarily because of any artistic knowledge or interest.

It’s this combination of unique artwork and manipulation of new production methods that creates the commercial boom and sends the Keane name into the spotlight. However, it doesn’t come without consequences, as the eerie scene of Margaret in the supermarket demonstrates. She walks through aisles stocked with brightly-coloured multiples of cleaning products, drink bottles and food, most notably, soup cans not unlike those in Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Cans. Like her paintings,these objects too have become copied over and over, blurring into one colourful mass. Suddenly, she turns a corner to see a display of Big Eyes posters,proudly proclaiming: “We have Keane!” Seemingly in disbelief, Margaret passes the display, only to lock eyes with another woman with freakishly large eyes.Hurrying away, she sees that everyone around her, including the checkout girl,and the family in line behind her, all have those huge eyes she gave the children she painted. If, as Margaret claims earlier in the film, she gets her ideas from “the world around her” then it is this warped world that has allowed her to be confined to the home while Walter enjoys the success from the outside world.

Indeed, the film’s bright bubblegum colours echo the optimism of Walter’s success, contrasted only by Margaret’s growing unhappiness from the loss of control of her own identity, both personally and artistically, as Walter tells her: “Keane means me.” Yet Margaret’s sense of artistic integrity is fully recognized and celebrated, with Adams’ character presented as genuinely talented, and being inspired organically from the world around her. Early on, Margaret tells her daughter Jane that “creativity wells up from within”. On their honeymoon in Hawaii,lying beside Walter on the beach, she tells him “Only God could make those colours”, suggesting she sees the world itself as an artistic creation. It is this gifted and appreciative personality that allows us to engage with Margaret, while simultaneously realizing the real struggle she represents, as the film concludes with the intense legal battle between the Keanes. While the courtroom scene is accurate to real life – a Time article confirms that a judge really did ask them to paint a Big Eyes in front of a jury – it also highlights the lack of representation female artists were given in the art world: Walter convinces Margaret to continue painting in secret because he argues that selling the paintings under his name is the only way to be successful. Similarly, the only other female artist mentioned in the film is Georgia O’ Keefe, the only exception to Walter’s statement of “People don’t buy lady art”. Yet against all odds, Margaret can demonstrate her honesty by completing a painting in under an hour, while Walter idles and complains of a sore shoulder, proving that authentic talent is no match for fabricated lies.

Overall, I would argue the film accurately portrays both the 1960’s art world and the struggle of female artists to have their voices heard. Certainly, some aspects of the movie are somewhat dramatized; the scene at the World’s Fair between Walter and critic John Canaday as a prime example. Canaday was a real person and did heavily criticize the “Tomorrow Forever” painting commissioned for the World’s Fair, with a Time article confirming that phrases such as “tasteless hack” and others used in the movie were quoted directly from his review. The same article also adds that, while Walter was probably upset at the review, there are no reports to suggest that he attacked Canaday or anyone else, meaning the scene in the movie where he attacks Canaday (Terence Stamp) is absolutely fictional. The movie generally doesn’t acknowledge any source of historical evidence, only showing a sweet photograph of Adams and the real Margaret Keane in the closing credits. All the same, I think Margaret’s story is one that deserves to be told; Big Eyes manages to offer fantastic insight into how the art market was changed through new technology that made art more accessible to the masses, as well as the fight of women to be recognized for their talent.

Bibliography:
Dockterman, Eliana, “The True Story Behind Big Eyes” Time, 25 December 2014
Ronson, Jon, “The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud”, 26 October 2014, theguardian.com (last accessed 17 November 2018)

Margaret feels bad for lying to Jane about who does the paintings so she goes to confess her sins. She tells the priest she had lied to her child and the priest tells her “you were raised Christian, you know what we are taught, the man is the head of the household, perhaps you should trust his judgement.” Even when she was looking for support she was told to submit to Walter and at this scene Margaret started to believe this is how it should be. Walter knew people could not afford “his” painting so he started selling copies of posters and postcards. This is when we see him become very popular.

The next scene shows Margaret in the grocery store passing the copies of the painting and she starts to see the big eyes on the people in the store. This is not the most successful part of the movie because it started to become cartoon-like. While I did understand that it was to show how the Big Eyes were taking over her life, it didn’t fit the style of the movie overall. She is getting sick of not being recognized and started a new style that she was going to take credit for. Walters reason for not giving her credit to the big eyes painting “was people do not buy lady art” which was true to the time period however, the movie did not focus on how intense gender roles were at the time period. She signed her new style of painting with just her initials because “people don’t take woman art seriously.” Although they keep making this statement, it is not proven anywhere in the movie. If they possibly showed us a scene of people discussing a women’s art and why
they wouldn’t buy it, or shown us another women artist not being successful. It could’ve given us a better inside look as to how serious it was at the time.

They get very wealthy and are now living in Woodside, California in 1963 in a large home with a pool, five bedrooms, and an art studio. An iconic moment was when she is in her studio that no one goes into because they can’t know she is the artist behind the painting and her dogs gets in and she says “well, I painted em, I did every single one of em, every big eye, me,
and no one will ever know but you”. I enjoyed this scene because we could feel how trapped Margaret was in the lies when the only soul she could tell the truth to was her dog. As she is her studio she come across a box of Walters old street paintings and sees they were also signed by someone else. This part is displayed well because it shows us her hitting her breaking point, she now knows he has done this to someone else before. She finds out that he never could paint in the first place and when she confronts him he goes crazy. I am not a fan of this because he acts way over the top and it turns comedic. The narrator (Dick Nolan) a newspaper editor brings us
back on track saying “when people asked me why did she stay, was it fear, lack of confidence, Margaret was trapped in a lie she helped create and now the cover up was worse than the crime.”

In another scene, Margaret’s daughter Jane looked for her mom who was asleep in her studio. She goes in for the first time and saw her that her mom is the artist. This was done well because throughout the whole movie we see how her and her mother were growing apart from the lie that was coming in between them. And now that Jane knows the truth of her mom being the painter all these years we see them connect again. We see Walter being way over the top in a scene when he goes to stab a man with a fork in the eye. Although we don’t know how Walter was as a person at points his behavior seemed way too dramatic as I mentioned above. But Margaret was alive during the making of this movie and approved it all so this could have been his true personality. In the one scene he is drunk and acting out, he throws matches on Margaret and Jane. He slips a match into the studio they locked themselves in and the room catches on fire so they go out the pool door and drive away. This was a great scene because we see how she didn’t care about the money or the home anymore and just wanted to start a new life for her and Jane. They move to Hawaii and one year later Walter calls her when she files for divorce. He says he will only sign if she sends him the rights to every painting and one hundred more.

Margaret has an interview with a radio station in Hawaii where she tells the truth that she was the artist and she sues Walter for what he has done to her. At the trail the judge says “in my opinion there is only one way to clear this up, you’re both going to paint” and they both had to paint in front of the courtroom. This scene shows Walter fixing the chair and moving around while Margaret is painting and he can’t start anything because he does not know how to paint. Walter finally starts and complains about his shoulder saying he can’t paint today. Margaret won and still painted everyday until her death. This movie was amazing and showed us the details of what Margaret had to deal with as a woman artist in the sixties. It shows the emotional toll it takes on herself and her relationships when she was not being acknowledged for the hard work she put into all her paintings.