Exhibitions
Events
On display
Big Eyes

Amy Adams in Big Eyes.
Film
Past event
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
Tim Burton's 2015 drama about the awakening of painter Margaret Keane.
In the late 1950s and early 60s, artist Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz) achieved unbelievable fame and success with portraits of saucer-eyed waifs. However, no one realised that his wife, Margaret (Amy Adams), was the real painter behind the brush. Although Margaret was horrified to learn that Walter was passing off her work as his own, she was too meek to protest too loudly. It wasn't until the Keanes' marriage came to an end and a lawsuit followed that the truth finally came to light.
106 mins
Big Eyes could have been a dutiful Lifetime movie about the exploitation of women. That it becomes something scrappier, deeper and memorably comic and touching is due to the radiant Adams, who never patronizes Margaret, and to director Tim Burton, who gives the film the sheen of a fable laced with menace.
Peter Travers·Rolling Stone