Searchlight Pictures
When done well, dark comedy is its own art form. It takes a heightened level of open-mindedness and understanding of its characters, the story they’re telling, and the audience they’re telling it to in order to truly pull it off. The standards of success are raised even higher when the content is dealing with real people in a true story. The Eyes of Tammy Faye not only excels in this art form, but manages to expand on it as it teeters between its dark comedy top layer and the endearing story of hope, struggle and loss that lies beneath its powdered, caked-on surface.
Jessica Chastain plays the Tammy with the eyes, and doubles her involvement as executive producer. With a brief exposition into her childhood, she takes over the role from her teen years on, beginning when she meets the charismatic, faith-driven Jim Bakker, played by Andrew Garfield. Their journey takes off to the rafters from there as you watch the two make their way through their expansive evangelism careers while trying to find their balance, their own God-fueled happiness, and inspiring the presence of God in others. What results is a perspective of the tale many of us watched unfold in front of our eyes with perspectives and understanding that didn’t manage to make it to Page Six. Cherry Jones plays Tammy’s mother who acts both as a neglectful parent and the source of grounding the two desperately need. The story is pushed forward with the strong, but nuanced portrayals of real figures in the televangelism industry who support and challenge the couple as they make their way from their humble roots into pop culture infamy.
As the title suggests, the story unfolds through the eyes of Chastain’s Tammy Faye, whose performance near single-handedly drives or influences each point of emotion through its subtle portrayal of innocence and vulnerability hidden beneath a charismatic exterior. Garfield partners her with a character that is equally captivating and charismatic in presence, but handles his own vulnerability and insecurity in ways that make you understand just how the two could work together for as long as they did without passing blame. You understand why she fell for him, why he fell for her, and the root of how these two pieces interlocked.
What Chastain, Garfield, and their fellow actors manage to achieve across the board is skillfully embodying these iconic, oftentimes eccentric characters while stripping them of the caricature personas that made them decades-long headliners. The dark humor is hit, and hit well without being at the expense of those in the story, which is a true testament to their abilities as performers and the integrity of the people these characters are based on. The subtly and nuance mixed with accurate articulation and depiction brought most prominently by Chastain and Garfield allows the audience to explore and experience along with the characters without mocking their quirks and beliefs. The result is the telling of a story about the underlying good, evil and everything in between that looms over the couple as they navigate the troubles of the world through rose-colored glasses.
The same sentiment is created in how the film reflects on religion, overall – a difficult subject to play with in a comedic lens without mocking or defaming it or the people invested in it. In juxtaposition to the loud and proud ways of praise from Jim and Tammy Faye, Tammy’s mother Rachel (Jones) offers the audience and its leads a more introverted and realistic approach to leading with God. From her seat as a supporting character, she’s able to drive the sympathy and relatability felt for Tammy forward as a constant, but shifting presence in her life. She brings their ideology and theology down to a level of realism that makes it relatable, providing a comparison between the way religion is approached by the Bakkers and the way religion is approached by the everyday believer. She creates a realism that effectively manages to humanize both her and the two leads instead of inflating their eccentric ways, while also creating a character that the viewer feels differently about every time you see her on screen.
The events and context themselves dig so many trope-holes for the film to fall into, but the vulnerability of the performances mixed with a cohesive, well-executed story and script not only avoid these holes, but furthers the audience’s investment in these already well-known characters. The film’s trust in the empathy, intelligence, and acceptance of its audience is leveraged full force as it brings the viewer on this excellent ride through the rise, fall and redemption of Tammy Faye.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye has a run time of 2 hours 6 minutes and is rated.
Share this post
