The schemings of televangelists are so cartoonishly evil I can almost respect the hustle. I mean, not really, but the sheer scale and shamelessness of their exploits through to the year of Our Lord 2021 have never ceased to amaze me. These scam artists represent villainy in the purest, most wicked sense, so while the film’s not a total knockout, I was nonetheless impressed and at the very least fascinated by the way The Eyes of Tammy Faye approached televangelism from a place of both cynicism and sincerity.
Jessica Chastain is locked and loaded for an awards season tear as Tammy Faye Bakker, the real life talk show host queen to infamous screen preaching king Jim Bakker. Partnered with director Michael Showalter with a screenplay from Abe Sylvia, Chastain and Andrew Garfield chronicle the power couple’s meteoric rise from humble traveling preachers to titans of televangelism in the late twentieth century.
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Bursting with bubbly energy without coming across as false or caricaturish, Chastain is, to say the least, incredible in the lead. Chastain makes Tammy Faye feel like a real person despite the script’s mostly one-note, gleeful representation of her which, in all fairness, may be entirely accurate to the actual woman. It’s a fever dream of a performance that leaves you exhausted on Chastain’s behalf without being tired yourself, so good the fact that she sings her own parts with flooring perfection is only gold-flaked icing on top of a five-star cake.
Meanwhile, Garfield is too good at being simultaneously pathetic and powerful as Jim Bakker (alongside a low-key great Vincent D’Onofrio and his televangelist politicking), oozing pure, smarmy evil behind the man’s ingratiatingly quaint style of showmanship. The film never quite presents what makes him tick aside from what one can only surmise is a black hole of avarice and ambition (maybe even genuine, albeit self-serving faith), but that’s also kind of the genius of The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Despite what their real life counterparts may have truly been like, like Chastain’s interpretation of the titular character, Showalter presents everyone with the total honesty of the faces they put on. Tammy Faye is naively good-hearted and Jim is a charismatic narcissist for the Lord, and as thousands of enraptured faces consume their preachings in person or on air, it’s almost like the film wonders if some good ever did come from their predatory practices. At the end of the day, Jim’s sermons were a product, but they did, perhaps, change people’s lives for the better in faithfulness and (likely minor, in totality) contributions to the needy.
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Where is the line drawn between the evangelical hypocrisy of Jim’s worldliness and the duality of Tammy Faye’s culpability between good intentions and extravagant lifestyle? As the narrative picks up to horrific and hilarious, borderline unbelievable stakes, these ponderings become even more twisted and captivating to reflect on. Unfortunately, they’re questions that floated in my head without the film ever really addressing them, and while pitch-black cynicism may have served Showalter and Sylvia’s narrative interests better, their allowance for almost moral grays makes The Eyes of Tammy Faye all the more interesting, regardless.
Still, Tammy Faye and Jim’s legacies aren’t skewered as hard as they probably should be (you still gotta get those life rights from the family, and I guess it was the good, Christian thing to do), especially for the former, who stops the nuances of the film in disjointedly unsublte moments to proclaim her kinder acceptance and love for all people. Tammy Faye’s advocacy should be commended and adds greater depth to her character and conflict as a philosophically independent, yet physically dependent woman to Jim (especially as we dive into the metaphor inherent in the film’s title, gaudy eyeliner, bloated exorbitance, and all), but this critical part of her life story isn’t given the due it deserves within the film’s writing. This is especially apparent in the film’s confused closing scene, which doesn’t seem to know where or how it wants to put Tammy Faye, Jim, and their life stories to bed.
But you’ve gotta look at the bigger picture, because there’s loads to appreciate about this film. While it doesn’t shine as bright as it could, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is still a gentle and never uninteresting glow.
Grade: B
70%
Fresh
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