High camp conmen
Cert: 12A |
IStars:
★★★★✩
T’S NO secret that 2021 turned out to be quite the year for Andrew Garfield. Not content with giving an electrifying all singing, all dancing turn in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s TickTick… Boom!, the actor also delighted MCU fans by briefly reprising his SpiderMan role in the latest instalment of the Marvel superhero adventure. Now Garfield is back with yet another award-worthy performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye in which he stars alongside Jessica Chastain (The Zookeeper’s Wife, Molly’s Game).
Directed by Michael Showalter, the film is based on Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s award-winning documentary of the same name which was released in 2000. It tells the real life story of disgraced televangelist couple Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker who, in the 1980s, were accused of defrauding their viewers of millions of dollars in donations and spending huge amounts of church money on their extravagant lifestyle.
After succumbing to drink and drug addiction, Tammy Faye Bakker was later embraced by the LGBT community, reaching gay icon status after becoming one of the first Southern televangelists to speak favourably on the subject of LGBT acceptance in the church, at the heights of the AIDS epidemic.
Michael Showalter and screenwriter Abe Sylvia have given us a thoroughly engaging and a robustly acted biopic that is unequivocally sympathetic to Tammy Faye Bakker in all its aspects. With moments of high camp and some deliciously melodramatic exchanges, the film does a great job in examining the hypocrisy of televangelism and some of its biggest stars.
Chastain plays Tammy Faye with great nuance and attention to detail without ever succumbing to the temptation to mimic or satirise her subject. For his part, Garfield portrays Jim as a gifted orator who built a career out of being able to charm people into giving both their hard earned cash and their devotion.
Despite some clear made-for-TV sensibilities — whether deliberate or not —The Eyes of Tammy Faye manages to be touching, informative and at times hilariously over the top. Furthermore, what the film lacks in high cinematic production values, it more than makes up for by allowing Garfield and Chastain to deliver two incredibly accomplished performances.
Garfield portrays Jim as a gifted orator who built a career out of being able to charm people into giving their cash