Two Movies About Art

The sheer title of today's post probably scared off half of you.   It would have frightened me enough to leave internet skid marks.

I am not a patron of fine art.   I couldn't tell you what constitutes a good painting and what is essentially a bad one.   I have friends who paint.   I have been given some of their art work.  It's on my walls.  It looks nice.   But, beyond that, I couldn't proceed to tell you what makes them pleasing.

So, naturally, seeing two movies about the art world was an unsettling prospect for me.  What's more boring than art?   Looking at a film about art.

But, I just saw two productions devoted to just that subject.   And, symbolizing the overall ambivalence I have to that genre, I loved one and hated the other.   Now, isn't that convenient?

The one I enjoyed was Tim Burton's "Big Eyes," an uncharacteristically uncomplicated movie for the quirky director.   But, as based on a true story, the film plays as an out-and-out comedy just like Burton's "Ed Wood" two decades earlier.   Indeed, both films were also written by the same folks so the pedigree works again.  And, thus, a movie about the pretentious art world is anything but boring.

Christoph Waltz is Walter Keane, an artist who really doesn't have an artistic bone in his body.   But he's smart enough to marry somebody who is and her portraits of people with big eyes are legendary.   Amy Adams plays the true talent here splendidly and matches Waltz' marvelous over-the-top comic performance scene by scene.   

Well, Keane becomes famous and rich as long as his wife is tucked away in anonymity making one pair of big eyes after another.  Eventually, she has had enough and challenges her husband.  The last act courtroom scene is as funny as any sketch you would have seen on "The Carol Burnett Show."  And it's probably all as it happened.

As a result, "Big Eyes" is enjoyable from the first frame to the last.  And it's so delightfully funny and interesting that you have no clue that the world is all about art.

Not so with...

 

I misguidedly saw "Mr. Turner" because I was hearing Oscar buzz.  Of course, more often than not, that buzz usually translates into being stung by a poisonous wasp.  This film by director Mike Leigh is all about some too-many-centuries-ago painter J.M.W. Turner and it's dreary as it can be.  I know nothing about this guy, nor do I want to.

Ugh.

Turner painted a lot of European seascapes and shipwrecks.   If he was still painting in 2015, he would likely want to put on canvas the devastation of this movie.    Turner, as grunted incoherently by star Timothy Spall, goes from one unsettling view of life to another.  His father, also a painter, dies of lung disease likely brought on by all those lead fumes.    As a result, you can't wait for the same illness to afflict Turner Jr..  Sadly, he takes about two hours before he utters his first cough.   And it takes another half-hour before he checks out and the audience is free to go home and sleep in their own beds.

The audience I was with applauded at the end.  Or maybe they were simply slapping each other awake.  This is a tough one to watch because it is so completely ugly.   Sure, the cinematography, inspired by Turner's painting, is pretty to look at.   But, then Turner has his next thing to grunt and we are back to a horrendous ground zero.  Indeed, the gorilla in "King Kong" was more articulate than Mr. Turner.

So, if you're hankering to see his work, go to a museum and not your local multiplex.  

Or, you can be like me and stay home to read true art---the funny papers.

LEN'S RATING FOR BIG EYES:  Three-and-a-half stars.

LEN'S RATING FOR MR. TURNER:   One-half star.

Dinner last night:  Leftover barbecue pork and rice.