Missing Time – Tim Burton’s Version
There’s an eighteen second pause during a scene in Big Eyes directed by Tim Burton, during an exhibition of paintings when the entourage for industrialist Andriano Olivetti, impassioned by the art on display, asks Margaret and Walter Keane who the artist is. During that pause time slows and a close-up shot shows Margaret paralysed by indecision and introspection before Walter grasps the initiative, “I am” he says, stepping forward hand outstretched and with a broad smile.
Burton’s 2014 film dramatises the relationship between Margaret and Walter Keane and it invites us to consider this moment the genesis of its complication. It introduces us to the young struggling artist Margaret. She meets and quickly marries commercial real-estate broker and aspiring artist, Walter Keane. Over the next decade they built a wildly successful painting and reproductions empire adopting the, then novel, technique of mass producing their art, selling lithographic prints and postcards and other merchandise as well as original canvases.
After detailing this astronomic rise to prominence from San Francisco’s bohemia and boutique galleries to openings in New York, Brussels and Tokyo, Burton’s film focuses on the main point of conflict in the Keanes relationship: that Walter, despite being an artful salesman, was, contrary to his claims, no artist.
Walter took credit for many of the best selling artworks they produced signed “KEANE”. These were the big-eyed waifs. Described as doleful, saccharine portraits of “appalling sentimentality”1 they depicted children staring, often tearfully, but always enigmatically directly at the viewer out of oversized eyes and virtually expressionless faces. Mass-production of these images sold at bargain prices led the Keanes to fame and fortune.
LIFE magazine described this commercial enterprise, “For prices ranging from 10c, to $100,000 they, or their reproductions, are to be found in galleries, bookshops, outdoors art shows, dime stores and souvenir stands at national parks.” 2
KEANE art wasn’t just sold at exclusive galleries but alongside baseball gloves, children’s tennis shoes, fishing rods, beach balls, kitchen aprons and other household wares all advertised at discounted prices in newspaper classifieds.
In Burton’s film Walter – played by Christof Waltz – consumes most of the oxygen. Played with the usual sinister charm expected of him – he was hot off an award winning streak of similar roles, most notable being his Oscar winning turn in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) – his manipulation and deception are flamboyant and unpredictable, his Walter is very much the villain, while Amy Adams’, Margaret is heroic, but muted; she conveys Margaret’s resilience through restraint, soulful stares, and comparatively fewer lines of dialogue.
The latter part of the film plays out in a courtroom scene where we see the big lie unravel after Margaret finally publicly challenges Walter’s claims of authorship of the big eyed waifs. It’s resolved by a “paint-off” in front of a jury in a Honolulu courtroom (there is some artistic licence employed with this timeline as this actually occurred in 1986, 20 years after they divorced. A previous such challenge in 1970 saw Walter fail to show up at all – but that wouldn’t have made good cinema). Walter feigned injury and failed to produce a single brush stroke in his defence. This cemented the fact that only Margaret had painted the waifs and she was awarded four million dollars in damages.3
The film rapidly concludes: Margaret had wrested back control of her life, moved to Hawaii, publicly reclaimed authorship of her work, divorced Walter, married (for a third time), to sports writer Dan McGuire, found religion with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and renewed her passion for painting. Margaret wins. Roll credits.
But you can’t help feeling that something significant is missing in this retelling.
Summary
- Director Tim Burton places Walter and Margaret’s authorship dispute at the centre of his retelling of Margaret’s life
- The Keanes’ advertised their art reproductions in national newspapers they were marketed to be affordable