The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Those falsies! That mascara! Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyeliner is what first leaps to mind for many people whenever her name is mentioned. But of course, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a play on words. The film wants us to look through her eyes at the Evangelical meltdown Tammy costarred in alongside husband Jim Bakker. It wants to thrust us into her spangled high heels to see the situation from her perspective.
Based on a 2000 documentary of the same name, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is produced by Jessica Chastain, who stars in the title role. With its luridly ridiculous cast of characters, any film based on the Jim and Tammy Show is at risk of caricature and this one skirts the edge. Dramatic interest is largely sustained by Chastain’s performance, which not only emulates the high-pitched chirpiness of her subject but exudes the giddy aura surrounding her. Chastain gets that Tammy thought she was doing God’s work, oblivious to the campiness of the presentation and—perhaps—to the corruption on which her lifestyle (“ministry” she called it) was based.
Abe Sylvia’s screenplay boils the chronicle down to a few cinematic turning points but paints the big picture plausibly enough. Tammy grew up in the “charismatic” Christianity of hard pews and hellfire but found her way past its vengeful God to a loving Jesus. At Bible college, she met Jim (Andrew Garfield), preaching the Gospel of the American Dream. In essence, God blesses those who seek affluence (in His name). Jim should know: God talks to him a lot. However, God also whispers in Tammy’s ear. The synthesis between loving Jesus and the God of Free Enterprise becomes uncomfortable on PTL, Jim and Tammy’s broadcast network, when she interviews an AIDS victim and expresses empathy for gay people.
In The Eyes of Tammy Faye, she is innocent if sickeningly naïve as she drapes herself in jewels and furs paid for by the donations of her viewers. Her grim mother (Cherry Jones), holding to the old-time religion of austerity, becomes the voice of almost-reason, warning Tammy against blindly following her husband and flummoxed by their displays of wealth. Jim is the brains behind the Ponzi scheme exploiting their followers’ faith as he dreams of Evangelical theme parks, family resorts and shopping malls while diverting funds to pay for the gawdy, tacky consumption he enjoyed along with his wife. Garfield portrays Jim as nerdy and squishy soft, his ego squeaking like a balloon about to burst. The line between hypocrisy and delusion is sketchily drawn, as it probably was in his life.
The film’s boo-hiss villain is Jerry Falwell, played by Vincent D’Onofrio as a turkey stuffed with sanctimony instead of sage. For him, televangelism was the sharp sword in the war against “the liberal agenda, the feminist agenda, the homosexual agenda.” He’s shown hitching the Evangelical wagon to the Republican Party, but even Falwell might not have suspected the wild ride in the decades ahead.
Blue Bayou is screening at the Downer Theater.
