The Pathos of Performance in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"
The film, with Jessica Chastain in the lead role, allows us to see the human behind the made-up mask.
For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, Tammy Faye Bakker was a figure of fun and derision, routinely mimicked on Saturday Night Live and the butt of jokes delivered by late night hosts and sitcoms alike. With her larger-than-life persona, her flamboyant faith and, of course, her ostentatious makeup, she seemed to be something of a caricature of herself, femininity taking to its tragic endpoint. That perception of her has proven remarkably long-lived, and I daresay that if you were to ask a random millennial what they knew of Tammy Faye, it would be that image that they would describe.
There was, however, a different side to her, one that was explored in the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Now, we have yet another film with the same title, this one a biopic starring Jessica Chastain as Faye and Andrew Garfield as Jim. Narratively, it hits all of the beats that you’d expect from a biographical film, carving out slices of Tammy Faye’s life in order to shed light on her persona, her meteoric rise to fame, and her equally fast fall into ignominy. Just as the earlier documentary introduced audiences to a woman they only thought they knew, so the biopic also reveals the beautiful, innocent, profoundly empathetic human behind the heavily-made-up facade.
It would have been very easy for The Eyes of Tammy Faye to give us a portrait of a woman who was ultimately as cynical and money-hungry as some of the other power players in the televangelist movement (most notably, in this film at least, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Jerry Falwell). However, time and again it goes out of its way to show us that, beneath all of that heavy makeup and simpering persona, Tammy Faye was what she always claimed to be: a woman who cared deeply and passionately about her faith and who genuinely believed that all human beings were worthy of God’s love.
This emerges most clearly in her fierce defense of gay people. During a fancy barbeque at Pat Robertson’s palatial estate, she not only ostentatiously takes a seat at the men’s table--showing, as she does throughout the film, that she’s a force not to be taken lightly--she spars with Falwell about just that subject. No one quite seems to know what to make of her, but it’s clear that, beneath her Minnesota nice persona she has a sharp mind, a finely-tuned moral conscience, and a willingness to talk back. She takes even greater risk later in the film when, after her rise to superstardom alongside her husband, she conducts an on-air interview with a gay man living with AIDS.
It’s hard to overstate just how big of an issue this was (and, in some circles, still would be). Here was Tammy Faye, arguably one of the nation’s most well-known televangelists, talking to a gay man openly and showering him with her unalloyed love, compassion, and empathy. All of this, during an age in which having AIDS meant almost-certain death and the equally-certain ostracization. It was one of the moments in the film where I actually found myself tearing up, both because the subject is so near and dear to my heart but also, and just as importantly, because Chastain is just so damn good at capturing what it was that made Tammy Faye such a compelling and charismatic figure.
Even those who didn’t especially like The Eyes of Tammy Faye have admitted that Chastain’s performance is nothing short of brilliant. As I said to my boyfriend after I finished watching it, if she isn’t at least nominated for an Oscar there is no justice in the world (I also think that she should get an Emmy nod for her equally searing performance in the HBO miniseries Scenes from a Marriage). She so completely loses herself in Tammy that you genuinely feel as if you are watching the real thing up there on the screen, rather than just a simulacrum.
From the film’s opening scene, we get the sense that the film wants us to feel with and for Tammy Faye. There are numerous close-ups of her face which, as the film goes on, becomes ever more made-up and ever more a mask that she presents to the world. There’s remarkably little discussion about this in the diegesis, and while this might frustrate some viewers--since, you know, her outlandish makeup was and is a key part of the Faye mythos--I actually think it works to the film’s advantage. It seems to me that Tammy’s increasing reliance on her makeup, which ultimately becomes unremovable, is one of the many methods she’s learned to project a happy image to the world, even when that may not be what she’s feeling on the inside (and, in this case, life mirrors art, as it has been widely reported that the makeup used in filming permanently damaged Chastain’s skin). Rather than beating us over the head with this or conveying it to us through clunky dialogue, The Eyes of Tammy Faye leaves it ambiguous, allowing us to draw our own conclusions.
The one time that the film does explicitly demonstrate the effect of her makeup, it’s definitely not to Tammy Faye’s benefit. She happens to overhear one of her husband’s assistant’s making a snide remark about how she looks like a clown, and while that’s upsetting enough, what’s especially devastating for her is the fact that he doesn’t even come to her defense. It’s a wrenching moment, precisely because by this point we’ve been led to see just how earnest and innocent she is. Despite the fact that there have always been indications that Jim Bakker is both ambitious and weak, a toxic combination that leads him to be both a bad husband and a bad businessman (and, while we’re at it, a bad faith leader), this is the moment where it really seems to hit her, shattering her innocence.
It’s no wonder, then, that Tammy ultimately has an affair with another man, one who at last offers her the affection and love that Jim has denied her. Even here, though, Chastain doesn’t allow us to lose sight of just how much of an innocent Tammy is. She’s not a cynical Jezebel but instead a woman who has grown increasingly lonely as she has ascended the heights of fame and whose husband is more interested in his financial schemes than he is in her.
Indeed, innocence is Tammy’s one defining quality, and though it keeps her from really grasping the full scale of the financial crisis that Jim has engineered it is, paradoxically, the source of her great strength. When a group of teens loudly mock her garish appearance, she strides right up to them and, the heart of ingenuousness, smartly informs them that if they are going to mock her, the least they can do is introduce themselves to her. It never seems to occur to her that they’re assholes; they’re just another group of people with whom she can establish a connection.
However, her innocence is also what imbues The Eyes of Tammy Faye with its pervasive pathos, and no scene makes this quite as clear as the one near the end in which Tammy, yearning to return to the love of the camera, pitches two ideas to a studio executive. One, of course, is a puppet show (Tammy loves puppets and sharing joy with children), and the other is a show in which she’ll talk to teenagers. She delivers these pitches without a hint of irony, her face as open and guileless as the children that she loves to entertain. It’s clear that the executive doesn’t quite know what to do with her and, for that matter, neither do we. How is it possible, we can’t help thinking, that she can still be so naive, so positive, so innocent, after all that she’s already endured?
But that’s the thing that makes The Eyes of Tammy Faye such a beautiful, haunting and, in an odd way, elegiac film. When, at the end, Tammy takes the stage at Oral Roberts University to once again sing her heart out, the audience is just as unsure what they think of her as we are. Gradually, however, as she pours out her heart and soul in her singing, they seem to come alive, and the camera’s repeated attention to her face (and, as the title suggests, her eyes in particular) allows us to feel swept up in this revival. It ultimately doesn’t really matter whether the rapture of the audience is “real” or whether it is, like the chorus behind Tammy, a figment of her imagination. It’s enough that we see it as real, that we at last get to celebrate with her as she has returned to the place that she has always belonged: sharing her love, her faith, and her unique spirit with other people.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye asks us, as viewers, to surrender to the profound pathos of performance. It’s to Chastain’s credit that, even beneath the layers of makeup, she allows the radiant inner spirit to shine out. What makes the film so especially poignant is the fact that it never slides into maudlin sentimentality, nor does it invite us to pity Tammy. Instead, we’re invited to understand and to love her, in just the same way that she loved all of us.
Long live Tammy Faye.