Jessica Chastain’s powerhouse performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye humanizes and brings dignity to a disgraced celebrity. Tammy Faye, of course, is Tammy Faye Bakker, married to televangelist Jim Bakker of the PTL Club. The relentlessly upbeat couple eschewed fire-and-brimstone for a happy talk ministry based on “Jesus loves you” and “God wants you to be rich”.
Jim Bakker was the preacher and talk show host. Tammy Faye was the singer, puppeteer and sidekick. Tammy Faye’s on-her-sleeve emotions, swinging between pep talks and ready tears – were especially popular (and revenue-inducing) with the PTL Club’s audience.
Of course, the ministry empire was a Ponzi scheme, which eventually sent Jim into federal prison; a sex scandal precipitated the collapse. The story is well-chronicled in the excellent 2000 documentary, also titled The Eyes of Tammy Faye, upon which this movie is based (available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube).
Jim Bakker (and certainly not Tammy Faye) was the mastermind of the fraud. But Tammy Faye, with her increasingly grotesque makeup and her flamboyant persona, had also become a figure of widespread ridicule, and her fall from grace was also very harsh.
Chastain’s convincing performance is centered on Tammy Faye’s EverReady Bunny exuberance and naive good intentions. Reportedly, she had to spend several hours each day getting outfitted wih prosthetics and daubed with makeup.
Andrew Garfield perfectly captures Jim Bakker’s smarminess and ambiguous sexuality.
Tammy Faye’s mother is played by Cherry Jones (Transparent), who always gives a strong performance. Here she plays a character who starts out seeming to be an emotionally distant, kill-the-dream stick-in-the-mud, but who evolves into the story’s moral anchor.
The one false note in The Eyes of Tammy Faye is Vincent D’Onofrio, who is supposed to be playing Jerry Falwell. Falwell, of course, was rarely seen without his smug grin. Onofrio plays him as a hulking, never smiling menace and with a much different accent and speech pattern than Falwell’s. It’s as if D’Onofrio had never seen Falwell, and his performance completely misses the insincerity and hypocrisy behind Falwell’s veneer of affability.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is now in theaters.