Jessica Chastain Has 'The Eyes of Tammy Faye'
#145: "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," "Blue Bayou," "Windy City Heat," "Cry Macho"
Edition 145:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: Jessica Chastain is really going for Oscar gold as a televangelist in clown makeup. The rest of the movie, eh, who cares. But wait, two other new releases! Blue Bayou is in theaters and Cry Macho is on HBO Max. To stream (on YouTube!) is one of the most bizarre and hilarious prank movies I’ve ever seen. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” sorry Jessica Chastain, but Kristen Stewart is the one who is ACTUALLY going to win Best Actress.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
You don’t have to go much farther than the title to figure out what The Eyes of Tammy Faye is all about. This is a movie built around the physical transformation and acting showcase of its lead performer, Jessica Chastain. As the photo above might indicate, she’s really going for it.
Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about the televangelist Tammy Faye or her husband Jim Bakker, who built a multi-million dollar ministry empire through the early advent of cable and satellite TV, because this movie dutifully does the work for you in the standard biopic format. We get an origin story, a slow ascent, a moment of revelation, a supercharged climb to the top that spins out of control, then a crash back down to earth, a reckoning and an acceptance.
The movie relies pretty heavily on the evolution of Faye’s makeup and costuming to shoulder the weight of those stations of the cross, grasping at the lowest hanging symbolism of increasingly cartoonish features equating to more and more phony ministry practices.
It’s best if you as a viewer don’t ask too many questions beyond that. The movie is more than happy to bring up themes such as gender power dynamics, marital friction, the collapsing lines between Christianity and conservative politics, the undue power of television, the corrupting power of money, and the very existence of God, but has no coherent thoughts to offer on any of those topics.
The movie’s stance on God is particularly confusing, because it’s so essential to the plot. Of course, as a strong believer in Christ myself, I was more than prepared for a thorough lampooning of the Christian faith by any Hollywood depiction (and let me say, for the record, that scandalous televangelists like Bakker and Faye do NOT represent true Christianity).
But the narrative makes use of neither discrediting Faye’s faith — thus making her more interesting as someone who lives her entire life based on a lie, and perpetuates that lie to millions of others — nor supporting it, which would make her a sort of prophet corrupted by the powers of the world. One minute she prays earnestly and gets an immediate answer from God, the next minute she’s buying a mink coat with donated funds. The movie makes no attempt to understand the contradiction.
Still, the makeup and costuming is so good — a shoe-in for Oscar nomination and a heavy favorite to win — and Chastain’s performance is so flashy that the movie almost succeeds in spite of itself. It’s certainly incredibly compelling to follow along.
Cynical folks call this sort of thing “Oscar bait,” a term I dissected when reviewing last year’s Hillbilly Elegy. Unlike Ron Howard’s red-blooded huzzah, Chastain’s performance here is compelling enough to realize that aspiration.
Unfortunately she’s let down by scene partner Andrew Garfield. Other than a striking resemblance to the real Jim Bakker, and a previous role as a priest in Silence, it’s difficult to imagine why someone with such an insecure screen presence (his greatest asset, when utilized correctly) would be chosen to play a controlling and manipulative powerhouse televangelist. That contrast comes through in Bakker changing his mind, literally going 180 in the middle of multiple scenes, a bizarre and jarring trait unless it is accurate to the real life person.
The result is a kind of well-crafted journey to nowhere. The overall production quality compels a viewer to expect things to come together, leaving one confused when the credits roll about what should be taken from the experience other than Chastain being a great actress.
But wait, you nailed it. That’s actually just the whole thing.
Something New
Blue Bayou (Theaters): There’s an unfortunate tendency across all genres of art to confuse something sad as being profound. Such is the case with this movie, which stacks tragedy upon tragedy in an all-out emotional manipulation offensive written, directed and starring Justin Chon. It’s the story of a Korean man in the Louisiana bayou who was adopted by an American family but never naturalized, so he faces deportation after a wrongful arrest. He faces racism, plus emotional, physical and systematic abuse, as a stand-in for the hundreds of real life people who have gone through the same situation (whose pictures are shown in the end credits).
If the goal here is to generate tears, or at least heart-wrenching empathy, then mission accomplished. Chon is a stylist behind the camera and a subtly powerful performer in front of it, and makes a good team with the charismatic but woefully miscast Alicia Vikander (whose Cajun accident comes and goes throughout). However, I’ve never been a big fan of outright activism movies, no matter how noble the cause, and this one definitely has an agenda. That makes the emotional string-pulling feel very heavy-handed. Besides, what is your appetite for relentless tragedy?
Something Old
Windy City Heat (2003, YouTube): Jimmy Kimmel made an appearance on “Hot Ones” this week and the subject of this movie came up. It sounded so insane I couldn’t believe it existed, and that the whole thing was available on YouTube.
It’s a documentary about a guy who really wants to be a movie star, so his two friends create an entire fake movie for him to star in, basically turning his life into The Truman Show. That may sound like sweet, heartwarming friendship, but this is a years-long prank played at the guy’s expense. It’s a brand of humor that’s normally too mean-spirited (and too cringe-y) for my liking, but in this case the guy gives ample reason to be made fun of at all times. He’s the type of character who is absolutely one-of-one, and Kimmel says he still believes in the ruse to this day.
Something to Stream
Cry Macho (HBO Max, Theaters): I don’t have anything new to say about Clint Eastwood, now an unbelievable 91 years old, still producing, directing and starring, that I did not say back in 2018 around the release of The Mule, or in 2019 around the much more successful Richard Jewell. I suppose that’s kind of the point. Eastwood began reckoning with his advanced age and legacy as America’s hyper-masculine vigilante in Unforgiven, which came out almost 30 years ago now.
It’s unprecedented, and perhaps even uncalled for, to see a main character who looks every bit of 91 years old pretend to ride a horse, throw a punch, and woo a much younger woman. It’s impressive, if you step outside the narrative and consider it, but that’s what you’ll find yourself doing at all times. The movie isn’t bad, but it is slow paced and doesn’t amount to much of a point, so your enjoyment will rely entirely on your opinion of seeing Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat once again. (I’d recommend just rewatching Unforgiven, or God forbid if you’ve never seen it, it’s also on HBO Max).
Trailer Watch: Spencer
Book it: Kristen Stewart is going to win the Oscar for Best Actress.
The lead acting categories tend to calcify really early in the awards season, and there isn’t much in the way of competition in Stewart’s category (especially once you eliminate Olivia Coleman and Frances McDormand simply because they won last year). If it’s Stewart versus Jessica Chastain, from what I saw this week, Stewart wins in a cake walk. This performance checks all the boxes. It’s a transformation, it has the sheen of prestige, it’s “her time,” it’s gossipy cat-nip for blog posts, it’s buzzy to Harry-Meghan current events, and it’s the kind of melodramatic overacting that always brings these things home.