[TIFF 2021] REVIEW: ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ is missing its sparkle
Jessica Chastain stars in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter.
Social media algorithms do one thing really well. They show you more of what (they think) you like. Unlike mass media of previous generations, you can put yourself in a bubble and be blissfully unaware of anything happening outside. No more stumbling across bizarre, faith-based programming and outsized personalities as you surf TV channels. Unless a clip of a lizardlike pastor like Kenneth Copeland ranting about election results randomly enters your Twitter feed, it’s a realm you might never stumble into.
So you might be surprised to learn about how powerful and widespread televangelism was between the 60s and the 90s. Dominated by charismatic, evangelical Christians, religious broadcasts are still out there, but they increasingly cater to their own spheres. In the heyday of these broadcasts, though, a number of recurring characters carved out empires for themselves, including Jerry Falwell, Sr., Pat Robertson, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. This was no fringe industry; it led to 24/7 satellite broadcasts, a Christian-focused theme park, and hundreds of millions of dollars in donations.
Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) makes the Bakkers the subject of his new biopic, The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The titular televangelist (Jessica Chastain) was previously the centre of a documentary by the same name in 2000. Sadly, the new film, despite featuring a higher budget, a recognizable cast, and the buzz of the 2021 festival circuit, fails to add meaningful value to the original telling of the story. Chastain and her co-star Andrew Garfield (as Jim Bakker) put in awards-calibre performances, but the screenplay and direction feel sloppy and overburdened by biopic clichés. The movie may work for those who have no prior knowledge of the Bakkers and their scandals. But for anyone else, it feels repetitive and shallow, especially in its efforts to show Tammy Faye’s defense of LGBTQ+ people in the midst of a repressive institution.
Early on, we see the inspiration for the title: Tammy Faye was renowned for her ostentatious eye makeup, especially later in life. The film charts her early experiences with faith, as she’s initially excluded from her local congregation due to her mother’s divorce, but is welcomed as soon as she starts speaking in tongues. She meets Jim Bakker at a bible college, and they’re soon married, planning to become travelling preachers.
Andrew Garfield as Jim Bakker, who founded PTL Ministries with Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye’s sounding board throughout the film is her mother Rachel (Cherry Jones), but Rachel isn’t given much depth, beyond periodically objecting to the Bakkers’ obsession with personal wealth over real faith. It’s a clunky attempt at foreshadowing the troubles to come and doesn’t have any payoff; Rachel dies off camera without ever having a reckoning with Tammy Faye over her decisions.
The action of the movie finally gets moving when Jim and Tammy Faye found Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries, the television empire that both enriched them and led to their downfall. As Jim, Garfield is suitably creepy, and swiftly becomes the primary villain of the film. Abe Sylvia’s script shows him becoming ever more distant from Tammy Faye, especially as PTL spends more money than it has. Jim embezzles donations from his congregation (or “partners”), buying lavish houses, cars, and other trinkets. He manipulates Tammy Faye constantly, using a brief affair she has with a music producer to generate pledges during a telethon.
The movie skims through the events of the Bakkers’ lives, including Tammy Faye’s successful recording career and the investigations that eventually led to the Bakkers losing control of PTL to Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio). It’s with this lax structure that the film does Tammy Faye its greatest disservice. Her somewhat groundbreaking decision to interview a gay man living with AIDS live on the network is presented here more as a means of prompting Falwell’s takeover than as proof of Tammy Faye’s attempts to open the minds of her viewers. As odd (and possibly hagiographic) as the original documentary is, at least it has a clearly defined message. It even sorts itself into chapters presented by terrifying (or endearing?) hand puppets.
Oddly, in the requisite “Where Are They Now?” segment before the credits, the filmmakers make no mention of Jim Bakker’s current exploits, other than saying he’s still working as a televangelist. It would have been a lot more satisfying to see them take on Jim’s continued hawking of horrible products, supposedly to support faith-based projects. To see him selling doomsday-prepper ration buckets and quack cures for COVID-19 would have helped bolster the argument that Tammy Faye came out better in the end, even stripped of her wealth.
Indeed, the film barely engages with the Bakkers’ faith at all. Other than a goofy sequence where a halo appears on the guy who gets them into TV, and Tammy Faye’s prayers being presented as voices in her head, the filmmakers don’t want to question how faith was tied up in the Bakkers’ problems. You could take all the religious content out of The Eyes of Tammy Faye and be left with the same dynamic: two people who wanted money and separately lied to themselves over how they got it. The perversion of faith-based messaging for financial gain doesn’t get the discussion it deserves, and makes it harder to apply anything in this film to similar scams that continue to play out today.
While the documentary version of The Eyes of Tammy Faye isn’t a must-watch for everyone, it at least has the benefit of Tammy Faye’s direct participation, and presents a more complete viewpoint than the messily reconstructed scenes in Showalter’s film. This version may have a Hollywood coat of paint on it, but it’s missing a soul.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye gets two stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
The prosthetics used to make Chastain and Garfield have rounder faces are supremely distracting in the early scenes. Bizarrely, it gets more convincing as Tammy Faye adds to her look.
The movie assumes you know a lot about the scandals going in, and waits a long time to explain what Jim Bakker was up to.