I love Jessica “I’m the motherfucker who found this place” Chastain. Chastain plays badass women and does not just give lip to social justice issues but puts her money where her mouth is.  I am also a child of the eighties. My mom raised me to be a Christian fundamentalist, and she loves tabloid television so while mom was never a fan of Jim and Tammy Bakker (neither met her standards of beauty), we had front row seats to their scandals. I saw “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2000) documentary once it became available for home viewing, but that viewing was before I started writing reviews so I cannot recall much other than it succeeded at distinguishing Tammy from other televangelists, who seem less interested in Jesus, a servant leader, and more interested in us serving them. (Spoiler alert: the fundamentalism did not stick, and I have such an aversion to preachers on screen if I cannot interact in a real way that I found it challenging to attend church online during the pandemic when it was no longer interactive thanks to vile Zoom bombers.)

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (2021) needs all the Oscars. When depicting such a strange world, especially if unfamiliar, there was a danger that the filmmakers could end up ridiculing this world, which could alienate potential viewers who would in turn feel mocked. It is not easy or instinctual to empathize with the people that inhabit this world, but this film does and manages to take viewers on a similar emotional journey that many Christians had over the course of decades charting their growing tension between their faith and the flawed, if not hypocritical and corrupt, reality that coopted that faith thus casting true believers as the outsiders. 

“Hello, My Name Is Doris” (2015) and “The Big Sick” (2017) director Michael Showalter is exponentially growing. “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” is a multiple period piece from 1952 through 1994. He uses archival news footage at the beginning of the film to orient viewers with the story, but also as a touchstone, and the scenes are never found wanting. When Todd Haynes makes period pieces such as “Far From Heaven” (2002) or “Carol” (2015), they feel perfectly preserved, not living, breathing environments that people inhabit, but Showalter succeeds in making these time capsules feel organic. 

I did not expect to watch “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and relate to the characters and see my faith in theirs. As a biopic, it succeeds in informing us that even as a child, Tammy had to fight for her place in a church that was severe, condemning, and flavorless. As a child, Tammy is depicted as someone who is convinced that love and acceptance are in Jesus and the church despite zero evidence in her actual surroundings. This conviction propels her to the seminary and leads her to connect with Jim, create their ministry and turn their vision of God into reality thus making them the young rebels of a formerly dowdy institution. After seeing “Miss Julie” (2014), I was concerned whether Chastain could play a character without her organic steeliness leaking through, but Chastain disappears and becomes Tammy, especially when she sings. Did Chastain just surpass Meryl Streep as a character actor in one role?

Chastain depicts Tammy as someone who never conflates people’s quick condemnation of her as innately sinful or a harlot for wearing makeup with the truth about God. She then uses that lesson to minister to others. While she has problematic beliefs for equating God’s love with audience adulation and using both as a substitute for the lack of love in her own life, it is characterized as an understandable flaw, seeking validation from strangers that one could not get from home. Show me a person in the spotlight, and I’ll show you a person with a bad childhood, especially politicians. Tammy stands apart because of how she in turn wants to reflect that love back to the audience by grappling with their real problems. She only takes political stances in the way that she treats people as her equals, especially gay people and humanizing the AIDS pandemic. In turn, when people try to degrade her, Chastain shows Tammy as drawing on inner reserves to interact with those people without losing her dignity and accepting their disdain. 

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” start with Tammy and Jim as young, vibrant people who reclaim God as accessible and invested in their daily lives. Because they live in a world of strict conventions, they cannot imagine living outside of God’s approval, but it is no coincidence that the role that their God plays in their life is more affirming and rewarding than the adults in their life have been. God becomes an escape from the lives of grim poverty that they knew. If it is sinful to want a better life, it is not sinful to serve God as a career, and if that career looks like a variety show more than a Sunday service, but you are still preaching and saying God, all the better for two performers. The film really nails how easy it is to slip into self-absorption as reflected in their comparisons with other Christian television personalities and looking into mirrors to check their appearance, but also does not question their initial sincerity. Instead of fighting, they fall to their knees to pray on a sidewalk or at home using God to cushion the blows.

Even though I am a fan of Andrew Garfield, who plays Jim Bakker, I went into the movie mildly annoyed that British actors are taking away all our jobs. Casting could not find an American actor? First Robert Pattinson plays a weasel pastor in “The Devil All the Time” (2020), and now this. Ugh. If you are unfamiliar with the reality of Jim Bakker, I cannot stress enough what an unattractive, unsympathetic figure he is, so I was shocked that the filmmakers and Garfield succeeded in making me see him as someone like Tammy who sees God as a source of hope, a young man thrilled to be in his wife’s childhood room and find a soulmate. As he transforms into a psychologically abusive, manipulative, insecure man, your hate dial will rise, but Garfield finds moments to inject flashes of doubt and vulnerability as he slightly flinches at Falwell’s constant disapproval of gay people. By projecting his issues on to Tammy, the film implies that Jim was postponing grappling with his flawed identity. Once he has time alone to reflect on his transgressions, he expresses dismay at the implications of his actions. The feature suggests that Jim’s masculine insecurities lay in his inability to reconcile his faith with his sexual orientation. A second reviewing reveals that the filmmakers carefully planted the seeds of Jim’s hubris even during his affable period. When he confesses an early sin during their first date, he blames sex instead of his poor skills on his accident. He does not consult with Tammy when making financial decisions. He will ditch her for the cool kids, but expects her to devote everything to him unquestioningly without expecting anything in return. 

Chastain projects the inner life of Tammy, a woman who accepts gender norms and her husband’s judgment, but also must navigate a way to escape them without being confrontational and challenging. By empowering Jim as a man, she helps herself, but when Jim faces a similar dynamic, he navigates it by falling in line and being deferential to other men, which causes Tammy to lose her power and fall into despair. She is constantly threatened with the pre-salvation childhood exile. As Jim gradually acts like the other people in her life by blaming his lack of attraction on her beauty regimen, shutting her out of the decision-making process and blaming her for his lack of judgment, she becomes complicit as she recognizes that their view of God has diverged. There is only one scene where Tammy drops the cheerful act as she eats cake and uses a normal voice resentful about being sidelined and lonely, but she snaps back into place to seal the deal. If Tammy sins, it is for not doubting Jim earlier. Tammy’s impulse for cynicism and survival is understandable, but not excused. There are only two times when she covers her face in shame: when she gets confronted for her attraction to a hot recording producer and after the Nightline interview. (Once she divorced Jim, why did not Tammy look up Gary? He was hot and nice.)

While Vincent D’Onofrio did not become Jerry Falwell, he delivers a performance that feels accurate in spirit. D’Onofrio, a literal big man, has always succeeded at being silently intimidating in his physicality and cadence. Even seated, he seems to loom over people. Going into the movie, I did not know that Falwell was a Baptist, and the Bakkers were Charismatics or how those differences were reflected in their styles. While it is an important detail, I wonder if others will also miss the significance.

With that said, when Tammy’s mom sniffs, “Not sure what’s so Christian about decorating a cupcake,” I do not think that the Bakkers were wrong to believe that God could become a part of their every waking moment. It only became wrong when they equated their hopes and desires with God’s will, which made them vulnerable to men’s snares. “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” uses her mom, whom Cherry Jones plays perfectly, in multiple ways. She is a barometer for the average churchgoer, and how they were able to loosen up over time, but also acts as an audience surrogate to warn Tammy that Jim is endangering her and their work. She also acts as a way for Tammy to reconnect with the church after the scandal.

If I had to criticize “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” it was not at least casually tossing in a few lines regarding her children. The movie deliberately fudges with the timeline of the birth of the Bakkers’ son to heighten the tension of the film, but at the end of the film, Tammy is alone with no kids, but an interest in reaching out to teens. “Framing John Delorean” (2019) did a magnificent job of reflecting how high-profile parents’ scandals affect children. While Tammy is the protagonist, the film seemed to consider her a good mother, but missed an opportunity to show what that looks like during the bad times. Also I wondered about the accuracy of the end since Tammy got remarried soon after her divorce. 

Someone asked why bother adapting the documentary now and retelling this story. Why is that person pretending that the same number of people who watched the documentary will watch a feature? Documentaries are the vegetables of the movie world, and no one watches them unless they are viewable at home with no extra effort. People will watch a drama because they think of it as entertainment. Also we are at another critical juncture of what role Christianity should play in American society. Is it a group of predators who fight each other for power and money while trying to conflate their views with God’s and using people for their own pleasure without considering the ramifications? Or is Christianity about Jesus’ joy, love, and acceptance? More specifically in a nation where majority of white women would classify themselves as Christians and vote against their interest in the name of their spiritual beliefs, a figure like Tammy Faye Bakker is comparatively revolutionary. I hope that this reviewer reflects the same energy when another remake comes out that a woman does not helm.