The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Looking at the Ken and Barbie of televangelists
Damon Smith reviews the latest new releases to watch in the cinema
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (12A)
BASED on the award-winning 2000 documentary of the same title, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye dramatises the rise and fall of “the Ken and Barbie of televangelists” through the heavily mascaraed peepers of its easily duped heroine.
Director Michael Showalter and scriptwriter Abe Sylvia offer an exceedingly charitable portrayal of the relentlessly upbeat woman at the centre of an embezzlement scandal, which sank the evangelical Christian PTL Television Network and originally sentenced Tammy’s husband Jim to 45 years in prison on fraud and conspiracy charges.
“What you see is all there is of me,” chirrups the luminous Jessica Chastain as Tammy in an early scene.
It’s a barnstorming, all-guns-blazing central performance that fixates on the wife’s overly trusting nature without making cruel fun at the altar of her campness and theatricality.
Chastain doesn’t hold back, whether she is enthusiastically spreading the word of the Lord through Tammy’s handmade Susie Moppet doll, building a successful music recording career or feeding her one addiction – a diet soft drink – through a lipstick-smudged straw before she trades carbonation for prescription medication.
Oscar nominations have been snagged for far less. Conversely, Andrew Garfield feels underpowered as the architect of the couple’s downfall. Depicted as a materialistic social climber, who gaslights and manipulates in pursuit of the gaudy trappings of fame, it’s tough to believe that Tammy keeps on her blinkers for so long, especially when her mother repeatedly warns about lining pockets with scripture: “Serving God don’t feel like it should be a money-making opportunity.”
Tammy Faye Grover (Chastain) is raised in a blended family of eight children in International Falls, Minnesota by a devout mother (Cherry Jones), who hides her eldest daughter from the congregation to avoid public reminders of her failed first marriage and divorce.
In 1960 at North Central Bible College, Tammy meets Jim Bakker (Garfield) and they forego studies to marry and establish a travelling ministry, which leads to a big break on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) under Reverend
Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds). Jim’s ambition sows the seeds of The
PTL Club (Praise The Lord) and he openly woos conservative pastor Jerry Falwell.
However, Falwell’s lip-curling rejection of homosexuality troubles Tammy – “We’re all just people made out of the same old dirt and
God didn’t make any junk,” she argues – and she defiantly interviews Aids patient Steve Pieters on the TV network.
The Eyes Of Tammy Faye is a sparkling showcase for Chastain’s multi-layered metamorphosis.
She comes closest to divinity but the rest of Showalter’s sermon is far from heaven, too conventional and narrow in its critical judgment to teach us anything new about the showbusiness of televised ministry.
5.5/10
MOONFALL (12A)
ROLAND Emmerich, German writerdirector of big budget sci-fi disaster epics including Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, unleashes a new threat to mankind’s survival in an interstellar blockbuster co-written by Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. A mysterious and deadly force knocks the Moon from its orbit and sends the Earth’s only natural satellite on a collision course with our planet. Astronauts Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) and Brian
Harper (Patrick Wilson), who served together on an ill-fated space mission, join forces with chatterbox conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John
Bradley).
The loner believes he has uncovered evidence of what really lies behind the doomsday scenario. As exaggerated natural phenomena destroy major cities, the trio race against time to avert catastrophe and persuade the men and women in power to risk everything in the name of humanity’s survival.
6/10
BELLE (12A)
A tale as old as time is turbo-charged for a quick-fix TikTok generation in Japanese writer-director Mamoru Hosoda’s lushly animated fantasy.
Set in an immersive digital wonderland called U, where every tumble down the rabbit hole promises reinvention behind a mask of anonymity, Belle grafts eyepopping visuals and unexpectedly dark subject matter onto the Beauty And The Beast fairy tale replete with a ballroom waltz that echoes the Oscar-winning 1991 Disney version.
Unlike some of his peers, Hosoda doesn’t view the internet with dystopian doom, seeing a world of ones and zeroes as a limitless playground where insecurities can be soothed through meaningful realtime interactions.
His script reserves the heaviest emotional blows for a structurally haphazard final act that ricochets between real and digitised realms to explore child abuse at close quarters.
Thankfully, Belle dodges a sinkhole in the storytelling to achieve a deeply satisfying moment of catharsis reminiscent of the filmmaker’s earlier work.