On the Outside Looking In

Maybe Jack Skellington’s large, empty eyes were Tim Burton’s way of not allowing anyone to see into his soul. (We did anyway!) In Big Eyes, Burton’s most recent work of art, we are invited to dive into those big, sorrowful eyes; not the ones that Margaret Keane painted on her waif-like children, but those of the artist herself, her soul, remarkably well portrayed here by Amy Adams at her best.

Tim Burton has outdone himself in this film. The film concentrates many aspects of the creative style he has been building over the years, like his use of colors, for example. Burton’s films are always marvelously colorful, whether he is using pastels, like he does here or in Edward Scissorhands, or dark hues, like in Batman, Dark Shadows or even Alice in Wonderland. His camera angles are another example of his skill. There is a little bit of Hitchcock, a little Wes Anderson, but a lot of just Tim Burton, his close-ups, his landscapes, his so very carefully crafted sets where there is so much movement, so much to see in each shot! The screen is truly a canvas for this director and there is never a wasted moment of film. It is still Tim Burton and Wes Anderson that keep American cinema in the forefront of creativity and give the audience so much more than just a story.

But even in the choice of the story we find Tim Burton’s style. Once again, as in Ed Wood, here is an artist with a rather obscure place in art history. Were Keane’s paintings art? Were Ed Wood’s films? Who defines what art is and how is it determined? What about popularity and art, "mass" art? All touched upon here, but this time Burton not only dives into the art of Margaret Keane and has his eyes on her soul, but he also impressively presents the dynamics of her relationship with Walter Keane, the husband that passed her art off as his and dominated her almost to the point of destruction.

Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams

The plot, then, is not just about Keane and her art, it is about a woman confined, dominated, as women were (and too many still are), trapped in a relationship that is slowly sucking the life out of her.  Burton is brilliant at capturing the feeling of suffocation, of despair that Keane suffers. With the talent of Christoph Waltz, who plays Walter Keane, we also witness the undoing of the domineering man; as women begin to take control of their lives, the men who dominate them also see their senseless world begin to crumble. We witness their ridiculousness, their smallness. The movie is a feminist statement in this way and more. For many women, it is a roller coaster of emotions and we are never removed from the characters on the screen.

I am surprised that many critics haven’t seen a lot of what I’m pointing out in a film that I consider one of the most complete films of the year. Again, maybe it is because a lot of movie critics are male, very mainstream and safe within their privilege. (The same ones that found Keanu Reave’s macho movie John Wick so compelling!) Burton’s humanity sheds so much of his male privilege and he is able to see into the soul of women dominated. Because he has looked into the world of the “outsider”, of those on the margins of society so many times in his films, he is able to takes us along as he looks into the souls of his characters, making us all the more humane in the process.

Director Tim Burton

A Good Year

The floodgates to the better movies of the year open in fall. Then it’s hard to catch up. Not just writing about them in this my most humble blog, but even watching them. I also don’t write from a major city, although its proud inhabitants would probably scorn me for saying this, so we have to impatiently wait for some of the more talked about films to arrive. I will not be able to make my top ten list of the year until they do, even as I read with gusto the ones being made by my favored film critics. It is these I want to share, even though many may have already read them in the newspapers and magazines they originally come from.

Noteworthy in this year’s top ten is the variety in the selections among critics who, in the past, have pretty much agreed on their ten favorite films of the year. This is good news. It means there were a lot of good ones to watch. This year my favored critics all agree on only one film: Linklater’s Boyhood, the movie feat filmed over twelve years. I have seen the movie and was not captivated, while I understand the accomplishment this director has achieved. Could it be that the critics are all male; does that make the difference? I did not include Manohla Dargis on the chart, even though I enjoy her critiques, because her list was in alphabetical order and included much more than ten films, so we don’t know which her top were, but Boyhood certainly was on the favored list.

Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

I think all critics agreed that there were more than ten films they would have selected as the best of the year. This is wonderful for us film lovers. If we just count the number of movies on the chart below, there are 28 very good movies on the list. The directors of these great films are also from all around the world, including South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, France, Poland, the UK and Spain, alongside some very talented US directors. Some of the American directors are very well known, like Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, and others still quite new and young, like Dear White People’s Justin Simien and Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle. There are only three women directors on the chart, one of them, Laura Poitras, for a documentary film. It is, however, fantastic that Ava Du Vernay stands out with her film Selma, included in the majority of critic’s choices on this chart.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in Whiplash

The Lego Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy are surprisingly on these lists, surprising because it is rare that the movies on the top ten box office list are included on a film critics top ten. They were both fun to watch and wonderful achievements in digital and FX talent, so good for them!

Will these lists coincide with the films that the Academy and the different movie guilds and associations choose for their nominees? Most certainly the fact that this has been a good year in movies, but with such diversity, will probably make the choosing hard and the award season that much more interesting.  Happy Holidays indeed!

Ranking	New York Times A.O. Scott	Rolling Stone Peter Traverse	Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty	The Guardian Adam Boult	Time Magazine Richard Corliss
1	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Whiplash Demian Chazelles	Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson
2	Ida Pawel Pawlekowski	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater	Boyhood Richard Linklater
3	Citizen Four Laura Poitras	Foxcatcher Bennet Miller	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson	Lego Movie Phil Lord, Damian Miller
4	Leviathan Andrey Zvyagintsev	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Life Itself Steve James	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Lucy Luc Besson
5	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Gone Girl David Fincher	Selma Ava Du Vernay	Leviathan Andrey Zvyagintsev	Goodbye to Language Jean-Luc Godard
6	Love is Strange Ira Sachs	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Guardians of the Galaxy James Gunn	Two Days, One Night Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne	Jodorowsky's Dune Frank Pavich
7	We Are the Best! Federico Padilla	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Gone Girl David Fincher	Nightcrawler Dan Gilroy	Nightcrawler Dan Gilroy
8	Whiplash Demien Chazelles	Unbroken Angelina Jolie	Snowpiercer Joon-ho Bong	Ida– Pawel Pawlekowski	Citizen Four Laura Poitras
9	Dear White People Justin Simien	Under the Skin Jonathan Glazer	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu	The Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson	Wild Tales Damián Szifrón
10	The Babadook Jennifer Kent	Interstellar Christopher Nolan	Jodorowsky's Dune Frank Pavich	Lego Movie Phil Lord, Damian Miller	Birdman Alejandro G. Iñáritu