The Eyes of Tammy Faye

When the concept of films came about, people were looking to escape into a world in which they can be entertained. However, as time presses on, films became, not only entertaining, but were created to inform, educate, preach to, and to send a clear message. informatively, biopics became popular in which to let an audience into the lives of certain prominent people, which is what we see in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye". 

This film is an intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. In the 1970s and 80s, Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) and her husband Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), rose from humble beginnings to create the world's largest religious broadcasting network and theme park, with help from Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and Jerry Falwell (Vincent D'Onofrio), and were revered for their message of love, acceptance and prosperity. Tammy Faye was legendary for her indelible eyelashes, her idiosyncratic singing, and her eagerness to embrace people from all walks from life, even though she was perpetually striving to find acceptance from her mother Rachel Grover (Cherry Jones). However, it wasn't long before financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and scandals toppled their carefully constructed empire. 

Others to round out the cast are Mark Wystrach as Gary Paxton, Sam Jaeger as Roe Messner, Louis Cancelmi as Richard Fletcher, Fredric Lehne as Fred Grover, Rachel's husband, Chandler Head as young Tammy Faye, James Huguley as Jimmy Swaggert, Dan Johnson as preacher and Wes Jetton as male nurse.

This was staged and paced with incredible expertise by veteran Michael Showalter ("The Baxter" '05, "Hello, My Name Is Doris" '15, "Giles Vanderhoot" (TV movie) '16, "The Big Sick" '17, "The Lovebirds" '20) plus TV, a video and a TV documentary. Surely with these interesting films he has directed well, his experience in the TV realm is about as impressive. All this truly creates talent that simply unfolds on the screen. Undoubtedly, Chastain is a consummate actor, but the way he was able to extract the emotions out of her to allow her performance shine was incredible. She will surely receive an Oscar nod for her work in this. It was amazingly well written by a virtual newcomer to feature films, Abe Sylvia ("Dirty Girl" '10) plus TV and a short. As with the director, certainly because of the incredible amount of writing in the TV medium was actually why this writer was able to write this script with such cohesiveness and clarity. If this is only his second feature film to his credit, I'm waiting to see what he will write next--and there will be another screenplay. This covers decades from 1952 through 1994 mostly as a flashback, so the film has a tendency to speed through the first part of the film. But considering that the running would have been exhaustively longer if they didn't do this, it was permissible. One shout out I really need to mention is that of Elizabeth Himelstein, the dialect coach for both Chastain and Garfield. Those two sounded exactly like Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, especially Tammy Faye, which simply added to the delineation of the character, however Himelstein is certainly one of the best dialect coaches in the biz. 

Other than Chastain, others shined in this as well, i.e. Garfield as Jim Bakker, D'Onofrio as Jerry Falwell and Cherry Jones as Rachel, Tammy Faye's mother. Certainly Chastain's performance was every bit as talented as that of Zellweger as Judy Garland in "Judy", so since Zellweger won the award in '19, maybe she could nab the award this time, although Beverly Hudson could give her a run for her money as Aretha Franklin in "Respect". This is a definitive look into the lives of these two, whether successful or fragile, and definitely is worthy of viewing. It's sad that anyone in any field seemingly has to be humbled to realize that they made a huge mistake.

Out of 4 Stars: 3.5                                                Rated: PG-13                                             126mins.