After two far-from ideal releases from Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films in the form of Ava and The 355, I damn-near used every last hope reserve I had left and aimed it directly at this film because I want something good to come out of Chastain as a name-brand producer. And truth be told, she seems to have finally found a production worth having her name on it, both as producer and as title star. Having been somewhat familiar with her work since seeing her in Zero Dark Thirty all those years ago, I’ve always thought of her as a good actor but never one that had a central mind-blowing performance to her credit. Until now, that is.
Never before has Jessica Chastain exuded this much warmth and sparkle on the big screen. She and Andrew Garfield are adamantly trying to work through the squirrel cheek prosthetics they’ve been given, and while Garfield finds an odd middle point between his performances in Hacksaw Ridge and Silence that fits the role well, Chastain is on a whole other level here. From her wide-eyed and inescapably cute beginnings to her run-down and fractured later years, she never misses a beat, which is a hell of an accomplishment working with a script that seems to be constructed entirely out of off beats.
Tammy Faye Bakker, as depicted in this film, is shown as being in the centre of a Tonya Harding-sized media circus, with the production around her operating much the same as I, Tonya as it tries to rescue the main character from their tabloid saturated reputation and reaffirm their agency as a living and breathing person. However, I’d have to argue that the attempt turns out much less successful here than it did with I, Tonya. The tightrope walk the script tries to navigate in showing Tammy Faye in all her facets, as a deeply conflicted and naïve woman who still believed that she and her husband should be doing good with the platform they have, ends up succumbing to its own contradictions before too long. To say nothing of the portrayal of Jim Bakker, which is dampened quite a bit knowing that the genuine article hasn’t exactly shied away from grifting his audience even today.
But for as much as the film aims well in its depiction of the glitz and glamour of megachurches and the prosperity gospel therein, the main crux of the film as presented also ends up feeling like a minor point up against everything else: Tammy Faye’s relationship with the Queer community. This film is specifically adapted from the 2000 documentary of the same name by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, names that most of my readers might not know on their own but have most definitely heard of their work. Their World of Wonder production company is the one behind RuPaul’s Drag Race and its exhaustive number of off-shoots, with RuPaul herself narrating the original documentary.
Now, with everything that’s being juggled within the story, and not all of it is done with grace, that connection still manages to show through in the final product. It certainly has enough high camp in its dramatisation of the characters and their frictions with each other to feel in-tune with The House That Drag Built, and for as nauseating as it is to see even a fictional portrayal of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (as solid as Vincent D’Onofrio and Gabriel Olds respectively are in their roles), Tammy Faye is shown as consistently butting against their overtly homophobic attitudes. Hell, I’d even argue that the film’s central scene is Tammy Faye’s interview with Steve Pieters, which not only lays bare her ally status, but also bolsters her own character arc without making it explicitly all about her.
It’s with that specific framing in mind that the film is at its best. When it’s showing Tammy Faye as a cultural nexus for LGBTQ+ acceptance, long before such causes became the charity du jour of modern capitalism (Pride Month should be a time of celebration, not constant eye-rolling; that’s all I’m saying), and someone who actively rejected the idea that Christianity was meant to be an exclusionary force. She’s still shown to be quite narcissistic in her own way, and there’s definitely a question mark on her regarding her complicity in everything happening around her, but by film’s end, that only establishes as a conflicted person, rather than an outright bad one.
There’s something admittedly impressive at how it avoids pigeon-holing Tammy Faye Bakker into being just one thing and, in the process, allowing Jessica Chastain to give the best performance of her career to date. As someone who, back in the day, was genuinely flabbergasted upon discovering the existence of church-affiliated Queer communities (my history with religion, and organised religion in particular, has a lot of rough patches, and the missionary impulse is part of that), it was certainly refreshing to see a real-life story that actively bucks against a preconception I still find myself struggling with. But for as entertaining as it is, it still suffers from a muddled script that has a lot of reach but not as much grasp on the many different facets of a quite fascinating woman. It’s an example of actors giving 100% to a script that’s at about 65%.
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