Review of Big Eyes

Big Eyes (I) (2014)
10/10
"Mother, I know..."
6 April 2019
The Warhol quote is making fun of its ghastliness and the invisible hand of the market. An odd choice to start on by mocking its own subject. As well I sense a subconscious undercurrent reflecting his own brand.

But the key to Tim Burton has always been Disney not Gothic. Here is finally a proper Gothic work in being everything but, with its colorful San Francisco and Hawaii; Waltz through structures of mental control, abuse in power, serial plagiarizing, is a Gothic monster.

There would be inheritances in stories like this.

But it's about speech as well and how if you don't say it it'll never be said, begging the tragedy how painting isn't enough. Her eyes don't just see but can't not see. They gaze the heightened details of the world. Then would be susceptible to larger than life psychologies which would entice her in love. A Gothic torture how love controls her. Then when images can't be hers, she chooses numbers. Numerology in the pop 60s make her almost a chosen one for backing the zeitgeist: late 20th century advanced statistics would forecast and streamline every single industry. Her drawings very much forecasted the medium of anime, which rivals all of world cinema. By her own devices left unchecked might've lead to some great garage start-up, Mac, PC... Keane. In all seriousness societal mechanics denying her ability to grow in art reminds me of Burton himself trapped in the machine of his brand.

Credit. Silence. Eyes. Its elements fuse a true fright. "Mother, I know..." Few will know the soul-crushing abuse of others taking credit for their work.

Usually, a woman so pretty would not be a Tim Burton outsider but the spark of her ghoulish secret drawings make her as him. Oddest. The whole film is about these demonic traumatized orphans happening in its background. A battlefield seems to be the anger as the commodification of western privilege. But against the abstract expressionist backdrop it's a valid contrary.

Most beautiful is it's this Tim Burton art film where performers are allowed to act not pose, even though it abuses green screen (its artifice you could say is Warholian at least...); much is said about the overacting, where Waltz has to strut around and make a great show of it, but he's being watched by Burton and Keane's; eyes so big warrant big visions.
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