“God does not want you to be poor!”
News clips of the infamous televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker bathe the screen like holy water on a church patron, their righteous conviction seemingly indisputable. If this were another quaint evening of tabloid programs and box dinners in the late 80s, the elusive answers that this exceedingly dubious and eccentric couple posed would be black-and-white. However, in director Michael Showalter’s scintillating new drama The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which chronicles the complicated triumphs and transgressions of the titular woman as she plays second fiddle to her villainous husband, resounding dimensionality is forged in seldom-examined gray areas.
The snippets dissipate as they keenly frame Tammy Faye’s (Jessica Chastain, caked in impressive layers of mostly seamless prosthetics) mascara-laden, twinkling eye while she prepares for a rare media appearance in the mid-90s, years after her deceitful spouse permanently tainted their public image. The makeup artist asks if she can remove her garish lipstick and artificial eyelashes, and the jaded, disgraced woman responds that she cannot oblige, clinging onto her cosmetic armor like it’s the only valuable weapon that remains in her battered arsenal, deeming them as her “trademarks;” some of those elements are even indelibly etched into her skin. “This is who I am,” Chastain says as she eerily emulates the giddy squeak of Bakker’s voice, underpinned by an unmistakable internal turmoil.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye may have inherited its name from the 2000 documentary from which it was adapted, but a more apt title would be if “eyes” were supplanted with the Shakespearean staple “tragedy.” At its center, this a searing portrait of an intrinsically tragic figure whose compassion was distorted by the domineering Christian ministers who only sought to inflate their own agendas, and under these parameters, this often-compelling biopic achieves in spectacularly glitzy fashion, even if its other insights aren’t nearly as divine.
The film adheres to a conventional biopic formula, complete with frequently disorienting time jumps that leave some story beats to be desired and a riveting scene featuring its controversial central woman quizzically staring into a mirror, heavily reminiscent of the scorching 2017 Tonya Harding manifesto I, Tonya. Both films astutely paint achingly human mosaics of their subjects that neither condone nor condemn them but, rather, glean potent observations from their respective plights.
When this notorious couple was at their zenith in the 80s, the era they occupied aligned with the Bakkers’ delirious greed, which often manifested in gratuitous opulence. The lavish period detail, skillfully rendered through the costume and production designs’ meticulous panache, imbue the film with a malicious effervesce that is keenly undercut by Showalter’s sobering dramatic realism; the aesthetic effortlessly straddles the cheeky and the somber. Jim (Andrew Garfield) claimed to be constructing a Christian empire, but all of his intentions were clearly predicated on his own self-entitlement as he financially exploited the masses under the guise of evangelism.
This is the illuminating disparity between Jim and Tammy Faye: The latter may have been willingly oblivious to her spouse’s illicit activity, but ever since she was a wide-eyed toddler exiled from her local Minnesota Baptist church for being “the daughter of a harlot,” she was galvanized to impart love to others, including those that would be marginalized by her bigoted counterparts. Ranging from a soul-stirring scene where Tammy Faye acted as an incendiary trailblazer by interviewing an AIDS patient on-air or the exhaustive specificity of her using a tongue depressor in lieu of her quarter-inch nails to pry open her many Diet Cokes, this film inhales the eclectic events and elusive idiosyncrasies of this woman’s life and exhales complex pathos, warts and all.
Jessica Chastain’s towering performance is instrumental in this, beautifully exhuming the humanity of Bakker underneath all the latex and makeup; these transformative cosmetics brilliantly serve as a dramatic device themselves, with each new layer plastered on to reflect her gradual descension into complicit deceit. It would have been incredibly easy to venture into caricature here, but this gifted actress is so perceptive of the pain embedded into Bakker’s soul, weaving together all of this figure’s innate remorse so eloquently.
Chastain is a performer of bone-deep grace and gargantuan presence, often defined by the dominant women she portrayed in films like Zero Dark Thirty and Molly’s Game, so it’s a testament to her versatility to witness a role diametrically different, that of an overly submissive individual and victim of marital oppression. Her most devastatingly empathetic scenes depict Bakker’s simmering tragedy finally bubbling over, such as her manically consuming Ativan, a drug that was used to stifle her, like it’s a sacrament or a high-pitched wail, one so dually pure and percussive that it could be mistaken for the heavens finally crashing down, that she emits in the culmination of Jim’s emotional abuse.
As a filmmaker, Showalter excels at cultivating tone and performance, but that proficiency cannot seem to compensate for some of the script’s shortcomings. Tammy Faye is captured throughout with vivid nuance, but the film never fully dissects the magnitude of televangelism’s malice. Abe Sylvia’s script meanders in many repetitive character beats, particularly the Bakkers’ domestic disputes, without utilizing them to underscore the systemic fissures that enabled these ministers to indulge in capitalism’s worst attributes and perpetuate some rigidly toxic ideologies. Tammy Faye may be a specter hauntingly roaming the halls of the Praise the Lord network, a backseat patron to what should be her own autonomy, but the outer details can be dramatically slight. Though Garfield also deploys gripping, chameleon-like gravitas, Jim Bakker as a character simply is not as fully realized.
“I just think of them as other human beings that I love. You know, we’re all just people made out of the same old dirt, and God didn’t make any junk,” she assuredly asserts to another nefarious televangelist Jerry Falwell (a terrifying Vincent D’Onofrio), who peddled clear contempt for feminism and homosexuals. This scene, in which Tammy Faye marches to and quite literally claims her rightful place at the men’s table, encapsulates Bakker’s unwaveringly compassionate fervor for others that was heinously co-opted along the way. The Eyes of Tammy Faye certainly grants its subject her long-overdue penance, but like the innumerable wigs she wears in the film, you can see through some of its fibers.
Grade: B
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is now available in theaters.
Photo Credit / Searchlight Pictures
