The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

Directed by: Michael Showalter | 126 minutes | drama, biography | Actors: Jessica Chastain, Andrew Garfield, Cherry Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio, Mark Wystrach, Sam Jaeger, Louis Cancelmi, Gabriel Olds, Fredric Lehne, Chandler Head, Jay Huguley, Dan Johnson, Michael MacCauley, Grant Owens, Coley Campany, Craig Newkirk, Wes Jetton

If you dress yourself up enough for a role, the prestigious awards will come to you naturally. Huge weight loss or a significant increase, quick use of all kinds of (facial) prostheses and thick layers of make-up; if you’re willing to suffer as an actor for a role, you’ll be smashed when awards are presented. Jessica Chastain can talk about it. Finally she got her Oscar. In her case, three times was indeed a charm. After nominations for ‘The Help’ (2012, supporting role) and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2013, lead role) – and many other awards for her work in ‘Jolene’ (2008), ‘Take Shelter’, ‘The Tree of Life’ (both 2011) and ‘A Most Violent Year’ (2014) – she won the coveted statue with one of her most cartoonish roles. In ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ (2021), about the rise and fall of TV pastor Tammy Faye Bakker, Chastain is almost unrecognizable thanks to thick layers of lavish make-up, cheek and chin prostheses, a series of wigs and exuberant costumes. This is definitely not her best role, so was Chastain rewarded for being so dedicated that she spent four to seven (!) hours a day with the make-up artist and even suffered permanent skin damage? Or was it more of a matter of time before she would be rewarded for having performed at the top level for fourteen years in a row and is it just a coincidence that she got that honor for this film?

In our country, despite the Dutch surname, the Bakkers are not nearly as well-known as in the US, where they were among the most popular ‘televangelists’ during the 1970s and 1980s, with their own TV channel and even an amusement park. But you can certainly make an intriguing film for the Dutch audience about the way in which they extorted money from their hundreds of thousands of pious and loyal viewers and their remarkable private lives. Back in 2000, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato released the documentary ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, which focused on the phenomenon of Tammy Faye and wondered aloud how aware she was of Jim’s shady financial practices, who eventually landed him in jail for fraud. Director Michael Showalter, the man behind the surprisingly fun multicultural romcom ‘The Big Sick’ from 2017, saw opportunities to develop that docu into a feature film about Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. In terms of content, however, he adds little to what Bailey and Barbato already discussed, so that Showalter’s ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ is mainly an excuse for Chastain and Andrew Garfield to let themselves go. With these top actors you hope that the caricatures that are Tammy Faye and Jim become more human, and Garfield and certainly Chastain definitely keep our attention, but unfortunately there is little emotional depth. The screenplay by Abe Sylvia (“Nurse Jackie”) follows the well-trodden paths of the biopic and does not dare to make surprising choices from a story point of view and does not come up with new insights, making it predictable and sluggish.

Directly in the first scene, the viewer is confronted – in close-up – with the grotesque Tammy Faye, as she informs the make-up artist from the make-up chair that the fake eyelashes and gaudy painted lips absolutely must remain as they are. Without even a hint of irony. Then follows the obligatory flashback to Tammy Faye’s early childhood in early 1950s Minnesota, where she struggles as the eldest of eight children (and the only one from another father) of Rachel (Cherry Jones). Because she is the child of a divorce, she is not a welcome guest in Pentecostal Church, although she does not care much about it. In fact, feeling a deep connection to the faith, she decides to attend North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, where she met Jim Bakker in 1960. The two click instantly, especially since they both have no problem pursuing wealth for themselves and don’t necessarily have to share it with the less fortunate. It’s the beginning of the money-hungry life the two will lead. They marry and drop out of school to travel around, preach the word of God – he with folk sermons and she with puppet shows for the children – and pass the hat to raise money for their own church. That Jim doesn’t have to spend everything to have something left at the end of the ride is a sign on the wall.

Almost on the ground, the rescue is near, with a neighbor in the hotel who works for the Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and who is a fan of the Bakkers. It doesn’t take long for Jim to get his own late night show on Pat. In a short period of time they are so popular and successful that they establish their own network – Praise the Lord (PTL) – in North Carolina and even have plans for a Christian theme park they christen ‘Heritage USA’. But Jim searches for increasingly shady ways to pay for Tammy Faye’s fur coats, and she also catches him struggling on the floor with business manager Fletcher (Louis Cancelmi), fueling her suspicions that Jim likes men. Out of frustration and loneliness, Tammy Faye reaches for pills and flees into her own affair with a music producer. As they feel the hot breath of the tax authorities and creditors on their necks, the negative publicity surrounding this once-successful couple piles up.

Our sympathy should be with Tammy Faye, and Chastain knows how to give her a certain vulnerability under all that makeup, but she remains an uninteresting aunt. Tammy Faye isn’t exactly the brightest kind, and her obsession with dazzling jewelry and pompous fur coats makes her short-sighted. That’s why she doesn’t realize what kind of charlatan Jim is… On the other hand, she really didn’t shut up, just claims her place at the table with the important gentlemen and breaks a lance for the LGBTQ community with a emotional TV interview with a gay pastor who suffers from AIDS. The fact that she dares to stick her neck out and refuse to discriminate makes her almost sympathetic, but if she does or says something silly again in the next scene, that glimmer of sympathy disappears like snow in the sun. It’s not Chastain’s fault, of course, but the script, which makes no effort to delve deeper into the ethical dilemmas and ambiguity Tammy Faye struggled with. As a result, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ has the depth of the average soap opera – which is helped by the melodramatic nature of the events, even though it all really happened.

Had Showalter made a parody of this, this film in all its excess might still have been good. But ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ takes itself way too seriously.