With Toit whether to sacrifice something for the sake of art? With your calm life, honesty? New movie  "Big Eyes"  directed by Tim Burton "Frankenweenie" , "Sleepy Hollow"), which was released on Russian screens on January 8, 2015, tells about the difficult relationship of a creative person with himself and with the world around him.

It is an autobiographical drama about the American artist Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), who rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. thanks to the portraits of children and women with exaggeratedly large eyes. For about 10 years, her husband, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), appropriated the authorship of the paintings for himself. Margaret lived in a lie, felt constant control from Walter, since she believed that a woman does not play a big role either in art or in the family. She publicly declares herself as the creator of all works, only in 1970.

Against the backdrop of sunny American landscapes, a mysterious story unfolds about Margaret's struggle for creative freedom, about the contradictions of art, about the ups and downs that are associated with them. The director picks up not dark, but bright colors (as in his film "Big Fish"  2003) to paint the seemingly ordinary life of the main character: she lives in California, makes sketches of her future paintings, raises a daughter. This contrasts with her deep feelings and dark images in her work.

Burton seems to be deliberately playing on opposites: the light of the world around him and the dark soul of Margaret. He seeks to show the multifaceted world of a person, in general, and an individual creative personality. 

We see the artist's emotions when she paints, hides the truth from loved ones, and slowly, step by step, we creep into her unconscious: childhood memories and some events from her life are mixed in it. Before us is forming an image of a whole person, an artist who wants to say something with his works, but an ordinary woman who is afraid of instability in life. She shows strength when she publicly tells people the truth about herself.

“At first it seemed to me that Margaret lacked self-confidence, but later I realized that she had a lot of courage, which was hidden under the heavy weight of social stereotypes and prejudices,” says Amy Adams.

It seems that the film combines both the family element - that is the basis for all of Burton's paintings - and the creative one. All the director's heroes are loners who strive to realize themselves in different ways. For example, Edward Scissorhands from the 1990 film of the same name made masterpieces from garden bushes with his own blade hands, or Sweeney Todd, a killer hairdresser. Among them, Margaret Keane takes her rightful place. She wants to express herself in an original way with the help of images in the paintings and understand her secret experiences, fears, no matter how difficult it is. Those. the artist's art is creative and destructive at the same time, its dark beginning completely captures Margaret, but without him she cannot live. 

Fully revealing the theme of creativity, Burton, first of all, seeks to show the relationship between people in all their complexity and simplicity, and, perhaps, the most important thing is to find and keep oneself in a series of problems and social prejudices.  

Text: Natalia Pushchinskaya  

Photo:  touch-magazine.eu