I’m hard-pressed to think of anybody whose life story interests me less.
Director Michael Showalter and scripter Abe Sylvia’s adaptation of the 2000 Fenton Bailey/Randy Barbato documentary clearly intends a re-evaluation of Tammy Faye Bakker, the more flamboyant half of husband Jim Bakker’s impressively massive PTL (Praise the Lord) broadcasting network and religious empire.
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| With their media empire crumbling amid multiple financial and moral scandals, Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) and Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) make a last-ditch effort to plead their case on national news shows. |
That said…
The agony is intensified by the astonishing persuasiveness with which stars Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield portray the televangelist couple. It’s frankly spooky; more than once, I had to remember that this was a film, and not the 2000 documentary.
Chastain’s performance goes much deeper than the surface affectations of Tammy Faye’s clown-worthy makeup, hairstyles and trendy on-air garb. Chastain nails the head tilts, the perky smile, the gently swaying “moments with God” and — most notably — the initially cute Betty Boop voice, which becomes insufferable as Tammy Faye grows older.
Garfield, in turn, oozes insincere, egomaniacal smarm from the moment Jim and Tammy Faye meet, at Minnesota’s North Central Bible College. She’s sweet and impressionable; he radiates “stalker.” We see the wheels spinning behind Garfield’s gaze, as the far-thinking Jim immediately recognizes that this plain-spoken but clearly suggestible young woman will be an important asset to his future plans.
They marry almost immediately, much to the chagrin of her mother Rachel, played with richly nuanced depth — total honor and heart — by the always magnificent Cherry Jones.
The goal of a biographical film such as this — the reason for its existence — should be to explore the background of an individual who grows up to become such an unabashed monster. Alas, Sylvia’s script doesn’t give us much.
A brief flashback introduces us to adolescent Tammy Faye (Chandler Head), Rachel’s only child by a brief marriage that ended in divorce. Although she re-marries, making Tammy Faye the eldest of eight children in a blended family, Rachel remains a pariah in this tiny Minneapolis community, despite total devotion and commitment to her faith. As a result, Tammy Faye is forbidden to attend the Pentecostal church where her mother plays piano alongside a fire-and-brimstone preacher, lest she remind parishioners of the divorce.
But Tammy Faye wants to attend, wants more than anything to be part of this environment: to hear the word of God. After watching services from outside, via a window, she shrewdly perceives what is necessary. So she resolutely enters the church the following Sunday, walks up to the preacher, and collapses onto the floor in a rapturous fit, complete with muttered gibberish. The congregation is ecstatic.
