Shot for shot, "Big Eyes" is one of the most beautiful-looking movies of 2014, but to say that isn't enough, because it's not just pretty, not just pleasing to the eye. It's visually astute. It is made by people aware of what these screen images mean, what they refer to, and the psychological effect that they will have on an audience.

One of the first shots is of a suburban street in the 1950s, with a turquoise car in a driveway, and something in the picture takes you back to that era — not to the public world of Technicolor, but to the private world of Kodak, family pictures and home movies. Soon the car is driving down the road, and something in the muted color and the emptiness of the landscape evokes movies from the '50s.

Tim Burton directed "Big Eyes," and though for many years this director was stuck in murk, this movie is bright and full of color. Better still, it's not a candy box, but varies subtly from scene to scene. So while one section has a powder blue and green palette, another will be pink, and another will be shot as through a haze. As Walter Keane, Christoph Waltz walks into an art gallery wearing dark slate-colored pants, while outside a gleaming black car picks up highlights in his shirt.

Not a single shot is thrown away, and few shots are merely functional. The coordination involved in this — between the director, the cinematographer, the production designer, the costume designer and the art director — is awesome to contemplate. And yet all this effort would hardly matter were it not in support of the larger purpose, the establishment of a very odd and specific tone, the precise tone needed for the script and the performances to flourish.

It's a weird story, and it happens to be true. In the 1950s, Margaret Keane left her first husband and moved with her young daughter to San Francisco. She liked to paint portraits, mostly of children, and she had a peculiar way of making the eyes unnaturally big. This style would eventually be derided as kitsch, but even if it was, this kitsch was original. And to be fair, the first time you see a Keane portrait — even the first 50 times — it's pleasing, and arresting.

Amy Adams plays Margaret, who is shy and uncertain, but Adams gives her a certain dignity, the sureness of an inner vision. She meets Walter while selling paintings at a flea market, and he's her opposite — confident, exuberant and inventive. For a while this looks like an ideal match and we think that we might actually be seeing the impossible, Waltz playing a nice guy. But gradually we start to grasp that Walter is empty — not evil, but like a brass band advertising a void.

Walter Keane, not content to be his wife's sales manager and promoter, starts presenting himself as the artist, pontificating about his inspirations and making TV appearances, while his wife churns out the paintings. For about a minute, this seems like a symbiotic relationship, a shrewd maneuver in an era that valued a woman's art less than a man's. But very soon, the secret starts to constrict their lives, and the resentment is on both sides — hers, at not getting recognition; his, at not having talent.

"Big Eyes" brings a bunch of conflicted feelings, which the movie accounts for in its comic yet disturbing tone. It's the story of an artist trying to break free, but the artist isn't exactly Van Gogh. This is art no one respects … and yet you kind of like it, don't you? (No? You won't admit it? Must I go first?) It's also a story that feels emblematic of its time, in that it's hard to imagine an intelligent, gifted woman of our era allowing herself to be steamrolled like that.

The script, by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, walks the line between the serious and the satirical, maintaining some distance but leaving enough truth for the actors to invest in. The casting is ideal. Amy Adams just has to look at a canvas, and you believe that she's feeling something, and what a miracle of an actor Waltz is, to be so funny and alarming at the same time, and in so many different ways.

Tim Burton fashions the perfect frame around these actors and then lets them fill out this marvelous creation.

'Big Eyes'

Now playing: Sequoia Mall North

MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language

Film facts: Stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. Directed by Tim Burton. 105 minutes

BOTTOM LINE: This biopic of painter Margaret Keane is one of the best movies of the year, expertly directed by Tim Burton and brilliantly acted by Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.

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