The eyes have it: Chastain shines in Bakker biopic
“If you follow blindly, in the end all you are is blind,” Tammy Faye Bakker’s mother Rachel tells her daughter in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. As directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick; Hello My Name is Doris), the film, while heavy on the eye imagery, largely glosses over just how blind Tammy Faye actually was to her husband Jim’s defrauding of the couple’s vast televangelist ministry. Nevertheless, the picture is still a lot of fun, and features a showstopping turn from a nearly unrecognizable Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye.
Showalter bases his new film on the award-winning 2000 Sundance documentary of the same name, and his story similarly focuses on Tammy Faye’s biography, from her Minnesota childhood to meeting Jim Bakker at bible college and their early years working with puppets, to the sex and fraud scandals that brought down her husband and their shared ministry after its heyday in the 1980s. Viewers curious as to what happened to Tammy Faye after that will be disappointed here, as the film doesn’t cover Tammy Faye’s later life much past the immediate aftermath of the ministry’s dissolution (she died of cancer in 2007).
But the ripped-from-the headlines dramatization of the Bakkers’ fall from grace is a juicy enough story, and Showalter even intersperses actual news footage of the couple’s downfall, which is a smart choice that adds to the film’s authenticity. Indeed, the picture’s ‘80s aesthetic is on the nose and off the charts, and one of the movie’s most entertaining elements. Come Oscar time, expect to see nominations for costumes, and, of course, for makeup, as Chastain embraces Tammy Faye’s infamous thick eye and face makeup to the extreme.
However accurate and dead on the costuming and makeup are, though, the picture would end up feeling campy if the performances weren’t also Oscar caliber. Fortunately, Garfield and Chastain step up, and imbue their roles with seriousness and empathy rather than winking satire. Chastain, mastering a Minnesota accent, especially brings a warmth and charm to Tammy Faye, allowing viewers to see why her audiences took to her enough to pledge millions of dollars to the couple’s cause. Viewers who remember only bits of the Bakkers’ story may forget that Tammy Faye was unapologetic about her acceptance of the gay community during the AIDS crisis, despite the hostility and disapproval she received from others in the evangelical Christian community at the time, like the Rev. Jerry Falwell (played with obvious relish here by Bobby Goren himself, Vincen D’Onofrio). The movie portrays Tammy Faye’s love and compassion for others as legitimate and sincere, and implies that her affection and good will towards others stemmed from constantly trying to elicit the same from her icy, strict mother, Rachel (Cherry Jones).
Where the picture flounders, though, is in examining Tammy Faye’s level of understanding of her husband’s financial crimes. While Tammy Faye clearly enjoys the opulence Jim provides for her via siphoning their PTL (“Praise the Lord”, or, as some referred to it after the scandal, “Pass the Loot”) ministry donations, she never seems to question or consider the source of their excessive wealth. The script, by TV writer Abe Sylvia (Dead to Me; Nurse Jackie) instead chooses to focus on Tammy Faye’s innate goodness, her struggles for love from her mother and husband, and her attempts to medicate herself via drugs and alcohol. But by having Tammy Faye be completely oblivious to the financial angle instead of a blatant collaborator, the picture does her — and us — a disservice by making her character a cipher: is Tammy Faye shockingly naive, or does she just choose not to acknowledge what’s right in front of her? Neither option is great, and maybe that’s why Sylvia fails to address Tammy Faye’s complicity — so as to create a more sympathetic character.
And the picture certainly does portray Tammy Faye in a sympathetic light – so much so that her redemptive rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” near the film’s end made even this jaded critic’s eyes well up. If Showalter’s goal was to reveal Tammy Faye’s soul behind the windows of her mascaraed eyes, he may not totally succeed, but, thanks to Chastain’s stellar performance, we come away with some real affection for the woman, in spite of her failings.
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The Eyes of Tammy Faye opens today at Bay Area theaters.
