--- title: Big Eyes Movie Review: Amy Adams in Tim Burton's Margaret Keane Biopic description: Amy Adams stars as the exploited painter Margaret Keane and Christoph Waltz her oily manipulator in Burton's portrait of the junk artist as a harried housewife canonical: https://time.com/3643566/big-eyes-movies-tim-burton/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-23T18:22:58.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:02:22.657Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Review: Tim Burton Paints by Numbers in 'Big Eyes' og:description: Amy Adams stars as the exploited painter Margaret Keane and Christoph Waltz her oily manipulator in Burton's portrait of the junk artist as a harried housewife og:url: https://time.com/3643566/big-eyes-movies-tim-burton/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd87e1aabdb16617c/6986a448810bbb7a08c93880/amy-adams.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3745 og:image:height: 2107 og:image:alt: Big Eyes og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Review: Tim Burton Paints by Numbers in 'Big Eyes' twitter:description: Amy Adams stars as the exploited painter Margaret Keane and Christoph Waltz her oily manipulator in Burton's portrait of the junk artist as a harried housewife twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd87e1aabdb16617c/6986a448810bbb7a08c93880/amy-adams.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 02:01 video:published: 2014-12-22 section: entertainment topics: artistic hobbies, Big Eyes film, 1960s feminism, strong female roles, gender gap in Hollywood, big-eyed paintings, pottery and knitting, acting careers genre: interview, entertainment profile tones: reflective, candid, warm, earnest emotions: frustration (medium), gratitude (medium), enthusiasm (low), hope (low) sentiment: neutral audience: film enthusiasts, art lovers, feminism-interested viewers, Krysten Ritter fans people: Krysten Ritter, Margaret Keane, Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz products: Big Eyes transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Review: Tim Burton Paints by Numbers in _Big Eyes_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Krysten Ritter on Art, Feminism, and 'Big Eyes' [Watch (HLS stream): Krysten Ritter on Art, Feminism, and 'Big Eyes'](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/BG3TWiQW.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2014-12-22. The actress talks about her artistic outlets, American feminism in the '60s, and her upcoming film 'Big Eyes' with Amy Adams and Christophe Waltz_ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary Actress Krysten Ritter discusses her artistic hobbies such as pottery and knitting, and reacts to first seeing the script for the film 'Big Eyes', noting the familiar big-eyed painting imagery. She describes her character as representing bigger feminist movements of the 1960s and says she feels frustrated by the treatment of Margaret and grateful to live today. She also reflects on the opportunities for strong female roles in the industry, saying she sees more opportunity for boys than girls, though she hopes this is changing. ## Key points - Ritter says she is an artistic person who enjoys making things with her hands, such as pottery and knitting, and gets into weird hobbies. (00:00) - Ritter says the big-eyed waif painting on the script's poster felt familiar, which she attributes to how mass-produced and ingrained those paintings are in the subconscious. (00:15) - Ritter says the paintings' big eyes are the windows of the soul, which is why the artist paints them so big. (00:35) - Ritter says the writers use her character to bring audiences up to speed with happenings in San Francisco and to represent bigger feminist movements. (00:48) - Ritter says she probably would have been part of the feminist movement had she been alive in the 1960s. (00:58) - Ritter says she felt frustrated for Margaret when reading the script, and grateful that she can now pursue her dreams and say what she wants. (01:04) - Ritter says strong, powerful women are the roles she gravitates toward, and she fights for good roles that stand out. (01:30) - Ritter says she sees more opportunity for boys than for girls in roles, but hopes that this is changing. (01:47) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:09] Artistic hobbies and interests. Ritter describes her artistic side, including pottery and knitting. - [00:09 to 00:29] Reacting to the Big Eyes script. Ritter recalls seeing the script and the familiar big-eyed painting imagery on its poster. - [00:29 to 01:04] Art, the eyes and the painter. Ritter discusses why the paintings are so familiar and the significance of the big eyes. - [01:04 to 01:30] Feminism and the character's role. Ritter explains her character's role in representing 1960s feminism and her reaction to Margaret's story. - [01:30 to 02:01] Strong women roles and industry opportunity. Ritter talks about gravitating toward strong women roles and the gender gap in opportunities. ## Key quotes - [00:00] Krysten Ritter: "I'm an artistic person. I can't paint but I like to make things with my hands." - [00:58] Krysten Ritter: "I probably would've been a part of the feminist movement if I were alive in the 60s." - [01:04] Krysten Ritter: "I felt incredibly frustrated for Margaret and the fact that that only happened 50 years ago." - [01:30] Krysten Ritter: "Strong powerful women, that's what I kind of gravitate towards." - [01:47] Krysten Ritter: "I seem, I see more opportunity identity for boys than I do for girls." ## Questions this video answers - What artistic hobbies does Krysten Ritter enjoy? [00:00] - How did Krysten Ritter react when she first saw the Big Eyes script? [00:15] - Why does Ritter think the big-eyed paintings are so familiar to people? [00:29] - What role does Ritter's character play in representing 1960s feminism? [00:48] - What kinds of roles does Ritter say she gravitates toward? [01:30] - Does Ritter think there is a gender gap in acting opportunities? [01:47] by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Dec 23, 2014 6:22 PM UTC Big Eyes Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Tim Burton, Amy Adams Movie HD by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Dec 23, 2014 6:22 PM UTC “I think what Keane has done is just terrific,” Andy Warhol told _Life_ magazine in 1965\. “It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” “Keane” was the name on the phenomenally popular paintings of waifs with space-alien orbs that earned the ripe contempt of the critical establishment (back when there was one) and sold by the millions in originals, reproductions and knockoffs that flourished in every sidewalk art show from Malibu to Montmartre. What Warhol and no one else knew in the ’60s was that Walter Keane, who built the business and took all the credit, wasn’t the artist; [his wife Margaret was](http://www.margaretkeane.com/). Those big eyes were his big lies — a scandal that remained a secret until Margaret Keane divorced Walter, went public in a 1970 radio interview and later won a lawsuit she brought against her delusional ex-husband. (She’s still active at 87.) Now this tale gets a superficial, DayGlo-bright paint-over in Tim Burton’s _Big Eyes_, with Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as the battling spouses in the [Keane family circus](http://familycircus.com/). Fifty years after the onset of Keane-mania, high-art arbiters have lost their power. Wealthy people of the American mid-century would ornament their penthouses with Jackson Pollock’s splash panels, as emblems of the most refined taste money could buy. Instead, today’s plutocrats invest in what was the low art of their childhoods — vintage comic books, Norman Rockwell illustrations and rock-star guitars — or in no art, like the Keanes. Burton, famed for bringing an extravagant vision and precision of design detail to movie remakes of _The Pee-wee Herman Show_, _Batman_ and _Planet of the Apes_, has collected Keane since the 1990s and commissioned Margaret’s portraits of his serial leading ladies Lisa Marie and Helena Bonham Carter. Is Keane’s work art or kitsch? In the post-Good Taste era, that question no longer applies. Even if Margaret Keane’s work were valued no more highly than C.M. Coolidge’s century-old paintings of dogs playing poker (two of which [sold in 2005 for nearly $600,000](http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/16/news/newsmakers/poker%5Fdogs/)), _Big Eyes_ should resonate as an intimate alternative history of the women’s-liberation movement. Here is a subjugated female emerging from cultural bondage to toot the horn her husband had been playing, and saying was his. The Keane story is a rich parable that deserves either a wilder or a more acute telling than Burton provides here. In the late ’50s, when _Big Eyes_ begins, Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) is a pretty divorcee with a Marilyn Monroe hairdo but no visible personality; she’s platinum bland. Arriving in San Francisco with her daughter Jane (played first by Delaney Raye, then by Madeleine Arthur), she gets a job daubing angelic figures on children’s cribs. On weekends, she displays her early big-eye acrylics at outdoor exhibitions — she’ll idealize your child on canvas for 50 cents, or whatever change you can spare. Her sense of self-esteem is so battered and basement-level, she daren’t ask for more. Sometimes a masochist meets the perfect sadist. Margaret’s manipulator was Walter, a natural con man who quickly senses both the potential appeal of her work and the fragility of her temperament, ripe for exploitation by his predatory charm. “I’m just a Sunday painter,” he confesses to Margaret, and even that is a lie: he lacks even the most rudimentary skills as a visual artist. But as a huckster, he’s a genius. Convincing Enrico Banducci (the wonderful Jon Polito), owner of the hungry i nightclub, to let him put his and Margaret’s paintings on the walls of the corridor leading to the toilets, Walter finds that the customers love Margaret’s portraits, not his landscapes, and — the sly weasel! — takes credit for her work. Oh, why not? They’re all signed “Keane”; it’s the family business. Besides, as Walter tells Margaret, “people don’t buy lady art.” He wasn’t kidding. The act or art of painting, from [the Lascaux caves](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/05/01/werner-herzog-cave-of-forgotten-dreams-review/) until recent decades, was deemed a guy thing — at least by those (male) connoisseurs who set the agenda. H.W. Janson’s 1962 _History of Art_, a standard reference that has sold 2 million copies (and which, it is said, was largely written by Janson’s wife Jane), [mentioned not a single female artist](https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/jansonh.htm) in its 572 pages. [The superb painter and collagist Lee Krasner](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952269,00.html), who as a student had been told by her teacher, the German expressionist Hans Hoffman, that her work was “[so good you would not know it was painted by a woman](http://www.quotes-famous-artists.org/lee-krasner-famous-quotes),” shivered in the shadow of her famous husband, Jackson Pollock, and did not receive a Museum of Modern Art retrospective until just after her 1984 death, She was the only the second woman artist (after Louise Bourgeois) to whom MoMA had devoted a major solo show. The Krasner-Pollock artistic relationship was symbiotic: two distinct, mutually enriching visions. Walter Keane was a fraud, but not simply a parasitic one. You could argue that his entrepreneurial flair — he turned Margaret’s big eyes into a flourishing operation that peddled not just paintings but posters and postcards — was at least the equal of her artistic talent, however that may be defined. Years before Warhol established his Factory, where others executed (and sometimes created) the Pop Art paintings and avant-garde movies for which he served more as producer than artist, Walter was masterminding the Keane mini-industry. Of course he had only one employee: Margaret, the paintings’ sole creator. And he kept her working away, anonymously and virtually imprisoned, in her locked atelier. Yet the script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who also wrote bio-pics of Andy Kaufman (_Man on the Moon_), Hustler publisher Larry Flynt (_The People vs. Larry Flynt_) and Burton’s _Ed Wood_, allows for fewer nuances than you’ll find in the Keane oeuvre. Waltz plays Walter as a psycho Svengali, preening or ranting, with an oily façade anyone could see through except for Adams’ tremulously insecure Margaret. For most of the movie she seems near tears, like the pitiable gamines she paints, and ready to surrender to a case of the vapors. Only when she divorces Walter, moves to Hawaii and joins the Jehovah’s Witnesses does she summon the gumption to reveal the sad truth behind the big eyes. In _The Fighter_, _The Master_ and _American Hustle_, Adams proved her expertise at evoking the ordinary demeanor that conceals an extraordinary will. Here her challenge is almost insurmountable: grounding Margaret’s character in some kind of emotional realism while her acting partner is bouncing off the walls of a different, crazier movie. Yet she comes close to finding a coherent arc in the three stages of Margaret, from weepy ingenue to angry captive to the [I-am-woman-hear-me-roar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUBnxqEVKlk) feminist who takes belated charge of her life and her legacy. In Burton’s oddly paint-by-numbers movie, Adams is the only one who manages to create a portrait more valid and valuable than the proto-Camp classics of Margaret Keane. ## Transcript [00:00] I'm an artistic person. I can't paint but I like to make [00:03] things with my hands. I enjoy pottery and knitting. I [00:07] sort of get into a lot of weird hobbies like that. [00:09] [ MUSIC ] [00:15] When I first saw my script. That image that's on the [00:19] poster the big eyed waif, and the blue dress was on [00:22] the cover. And I felt familiar, I felt like I had seen it [00:26] before but I wasn't sure how. And I think that, that [00:29] speaks to how ubiquitous those paintings are. Because [00:33] they are mass produced. They some how ingrained [00:35] themselves in to our subconscious. The eyes are the [00:38] windows of the soul. That's [00:43] why I paint them so big. I've always done it that way. [00:44] Why are you lying? The writer's [00:48] use my character to get everybody up to speed with [00:52] the happenings in San Francisco and I represent sort of [00:55] bigger feminist movements. A bolder woman of that [00:58] time. Time who speaks up. I probably would've been a [01:03] part of the feminist movement if I were alive in the [01:04] 60s. When I read the script, I felt incredibly [01:08] frustrated for Margaret and the fact that that only [01:11] happened 50 years ago. I also felt very grateful that I [01:15] live in a time where I can do what I want and. And [01:18] pursue the dreams that I have. And say what I wanna [01:22] say for the most part. So I feel grateful. I feel grateful [01:25] to live you know, now. [ LAUGH ] Strong [01:30] powerful women, that's what I kind of gravitate [01:32] towards. When you see something good that you. You, [01:36] it stands out and you wanna fight for it. It would be [01:39] greedy for me to say their aren't a lot of roles because [01:42] I'm working consistently. And I'm very fortunate. But [01:47] yeah, I, I definitely think that there's, I seem, I see [01:51] more opportunity identity for boys than I do for girls. [01:53] But that's hopefully changing. 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