There is nothing that Jessica Chastain cannot accomplish. The way that she inhabits the titular character in The Eyes of Tammy Faye is sublime. There’s an evolution to her characterization over the decades that embodies the spirit of Tammy Faye Baker and humanizes her in a way that has never been accomplished before.
Andrew Garfield is Jim Bakker, a charismatic preacher who captures Tammy Faye’s heart in Bible college in the early 60s. They drop out, get married and hit the road spreading the gospel. Their rapid rise gets some help when they meet Pat Robertson, who himself had a TV program preaching the word to millions of viewers. He liked the couple, their puppet gimmick, and most of all—their undeniable television innate chemistry. Next thing you know, the pair are starting their own network and it’s an enormous smash.
Director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) doles out his story through the script of Abe Sylvia, based on the documentary by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, in such a way that inches of the Bakker’s life is revealed at any one time, and it all adds up to a solid cornucopia of a couple on the rise and their unavoidable fall.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye goes back to the beginning of her life and paints a picture that presents a young girl who is hungry for the love of Jesus, but due to her small-town upbringing and divorced mother Rachel (Cherry Jones)—who has remarried—she is forbidden from going to church because they see her as an abomination. Her mother, Rachel (an always outstanding Cherry Jones), is not supportive and distant to say the least.
By illustrating this aspect of Tammy Faye’s life, one can more understand the decisions she made, and the life choices that were undertaken as her years progressed. She just wanted to be loved and to love… all. There’s a moving scene where she even has a man with AIDS in the midst of the early days of the epidemic on their show. Evangelicals had a fit, but it raised awareness and showed that G-d loves all his creatures, regardless of their ailments and life situations. It’s a telling moment and an important one to include in this narrative.
This is a story that played out in front of all of our eyes. It is also one of those true stories where many of us keenly know where the story is going to veer and conclude. What Showalter does is keep you guessing and also have you forget the reality behind the cinema and instead tell his tale of the life and times of James and Tammy Faye Bakker.
Even though we know the headlines, having an inside view of the meltdown of their religious and cultural power is fascinating. There’s one issue with the portrayal of Bakker that is two-fold. One, screenwriters don’t quite do enough to get to the heart of who Jim Bakker is and why he does what he does. Yes, this is Tammy Faye’s story, but Jim is integral to her tale and the absence of any kind of depth to his tale feels empty. For example, we don’t even meet or are informed about his parents and his upbringing.
The duo started PTL (Praise the Lord) and utilized new cable and satellite technology to broadcast their word to over 20 million people a day, every day. That attracted the attention of the evangelical preachers that were dotting the landscape, most notably Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio), who comes off more like a leech here than a brother in arms for the Bakkers. The actor handles that aspect of the characterization brilliantly and if there is an antagonist in this story of scandal, it is firmly him.
Cash was flowing in, but as exposed in Showalter’s film, the company was bleeding money, but it was kept on the down-low and Tammy Faye in all honestly, was unaware how deep that money pit went. This is just the tip of the iceberg of this couple’s problems. Of course, there are the well-known infidelities, which would bring Jim down—but that was merely the beginning of this crumbling empire.
The issue with The Eyes of Tammy Faye is one of pacing and a lack of heavy-handedness that a story like this requires. Jim frauded believers out of hundreds of millions of dollars in the name of G-d and saving souls. The weight of that is never truly brought to the forefront and presented as the disgrace against humanity that it was and is. Evangelical Christianity could have been put on trial with this film, but instead, Showalter chooses to make this a character study and in light of the damage that they have collectively done in dividing our nation, sadly, that aspect is sorely missing.
Garfield does a terrific job. Having seen the real man countless times over the decades, he is a personality that is ingrained in our collective soul. That is a difficult role to fill for any actor. Yet the Spider-Man actor does something with it that seems simple in hindsight—he makes it his own. This is not an impression of Jim Bakker. This is Andrew Garfield’s interpretation of what the man’s life and beliefs are like and how he lived his life and lived on the edge of saving souls and saving himself. The only issue with Garfield is as much as Chastain is transformed in one of those Oscar nominated-type performances and makeup achievements, the actor ages in hair only and doesn’t seem to age over the course of the film’s several decades. I can forgive and forget a lot, but it is distracting.
What else comes through, and it should surprise nobody who has followed the man’s career, is the opportunities and lack of Christian living that is Falwell. He is portrayed by one of the most esteemed actors of his generation, D’Onofrio, who turns in a performance that has one firmly believing that this unspoken brotherhood of tele-ministers had each other’s back, In fact, he may be the snake the is the slimiest in the entire movie.
The issue with the film is that Showalter has helmed a slightly uneven biopic of a couple who could not have been more well known, for good and nefarious reasons. It is uneven and doesn’t really do much in terms of enlightening audiences with new information that would help them understand what this couple was thinking and believing while they were living a life that would undercut them like a tsunami of press and scandal.
This is Chastain’s movie. She is a hurricane and cannot be matched. Everyone else is performing on land and she is leagues above them with an Oscar-worthy turn that because the film is just above average might doom her chances at a nod. The way she physically transforms into a woman the whole world knows is uncanny. The manner with which she portrays this woman who just wanted to be loved by people, G-d, and Jesus, is heartbreaking and raw. This is another example of an actress who we should be thanking our lucky stars to exist during the time we were lucky to be alive to witness her greatness.
Grade: B