ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Darrel Manson

13 Minutes: The Storms of Life

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In Lindsay Gossling’s 13 Minutes, a natural catastrophe brings devastation to a community. But this isn’t your typical disaster movie that brings the survivors together to return to the way things were. Rather, this is really about the personal catastrophes that were already present in their lives.

Set in a rural Oklahoma town, we meet several people who are struggling in various ways. Rick and Tammy (Trace Adkins and Anne Heche) who are struggling to keep their family farm afloat. Their son Luke (Will Peltz) is a deeply closeted gay man. Maddy (Sofia Vassilieva) is facing a surprise pregnancy. Tammy, who also works at the clinic, strongly pushes her to keep the child. Her mother Jess (Thora Birch) is more pragmatic and suggests that Maddy has choices. Ana (Paz Vega) works at the local motel but has plans to buy a house so she and her fiancé Carlos (Yancey Arias), who is undocumented, can live the American dream. Brad (Peter Facinelli), the local TV weatherman, and Kim (Amy Smart), the local emergency response coordinator, have a hearing-impaired daughter, Peyton (Shaylee Mansfield).

The first half of the film is spent allowing us to meet all these people and see the struggles they each must deal with in their day to day lives. There is a bit of background noise that bad weather is coming. It turns out that there is a massive tornado headed for the town. Soon, people are seeking shelter (or not) as it comes ever closer. After it hits, the devastation is total. Survivors must try to find loved ones and begin to deal with the massive emergency they all are facing.

The storm is something of a metaphor for the issues that people are facing in their lives. Each may be facing the loss not just of buildings, but of the world that defines them. The film doesn’t paint a rosy picture of a community that becomes stronger in the face of adversity. Rather this film shows that life’s trials are often very demanding, and may not resolve happily.

The film spreads itself a bit to thin by trying to include so many areas of personal struggle, including LGBTQ issues, abortion, immigration, disabilities, cost of medical care, and the family farming crisis. All of those issues are well worth looking at from a personal perspective. But the film never really resolves the many trials that the people are facing. Instead the film leaves us looking at a world that has been thoroughly destroyed. There is no vision of a rebuilding community. And there is very little vision of the rebuilding from the personal catastrophes that the characters have been living. Some of those issues are exacerbated by the natural disaster.

13 Minutes is playing in select theaters and coming to VOD in November.

Photos courtesy of Quiver Distribution.

Finding Kendrick Johnson – A life that matters

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“My baby’s life matters.”

Unless we choose willful ignorance, we should all know that Black people in America have faced violence for a very long time. Sometimes that has happened at the hands of police. Sometimes it has happened in lynchings. But we need to remember that those who experience such events are individuals—someone’s friend or child. Finding Kendrick Johnson puts a face on one such death that has failed to find any closure of justice. Director Jason Pollock earlier told the story of Michael Brown who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri in Stranger Fruit. Like that film, Finding Kendrick Johnson gives us the story of this death mainly through the eyes of the family.

Seventeen year old Kendrick Johnson’s body was found rolled up in a gym mat at his high school in Valdosta. Georgia. After a four year investigation, no one has been charged in the killing. In fact, the initial findings were that his death was accidental. This film looks at the facts of the case that makes such a finding seem ludicrous. The US Justice Department sent investigators because two persons of interest in the case were sons of an FBI agent. As we see the evidence we sense there could well be a deep cover-up in the case. One of the DOJ investigators tells of how shocked he was that no charges were ever made. A forensic pathologist hired by the family is deeply critical of the handling of the case by the local medical examiners (who somehow lost the body’s organs).

All of this is put into context with a history of lynching of black people. Is that an apt issue to bring into the film? That is up to each viewer to decide. I can easily imagine scenarios with the facts of the film that would qualify this as a lynching. But I can also imagine scenarios that wouldn’t qualify a definition of lynching. But to be sure, because this involves a black man, such a possibility needs to be considered.

Even more important is the evidence that this case was not initially treated as important. We are asked to consider if the body had been of a white student, if the investigation would have been the same. The systemic racism that can lead to the victim’s race making a case more or less important is a key part of this film. The fact that his family had to go great lengths to try to get answers speaks to a system that may not be interested in justice for all people.

It is important that I watched and reacted to this film as a white person. I would expect that a Black person might well have a much different experience of the film. It is not that I’m skeptical of the film’s facts. What happened to Kendrick Johnson was terrible. What happened to his family is heartbreaking. That so many errors were made (either intentionally or through incompetence) adds to the tragedy in the lack of closure for those involved. But I’m not sure I can make the same implied conclusions that the film makes. That could well be tied to my White experience of the world. That understanding could create blind spots for me as I watch the film.

Finding Kendrick Johnson is showing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Gravitas Films.

Luzzu – Moderity vs. Tradition

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“Without a boat you lose your way.”

Is it possible to live in a rapidly changing world and stay true to the past? If we start giving up bits of our heritage, will there be anything left of it? Traditional ways of life compete with modernity in Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu.

On Malta, Jesmark (Jesmark Scicluna) fishes in the ways of his family for generations in a brightly colored luzzu boat. The boat was his father’s, and his father’s, and his father’s. Jesmark’s baby footprint is painted on the inside of the boat. He goes out fishing each day, but it is hard work with little payback—especially when trawlers are catching far more, but destroying the ecosystem in the process. When his boat develops a leak, he brings it ashore until he can replace the bad piece of wood.

But Jesmark is also a family man. His wife (Michela Farrugia) and infant son depend on him, and medical bills for the baby are beginning to grow. Jesmark could take a payout from the EU that wants to decrease the number of fishermen, but that would mean giving up fishing forever and destroying the boat. But Jesmark has also discovered the shady side of the fish market, and has begun to attach himself to the black market, moving illegal catches and other goods on and off the island.

Will this be the answer to his family’s needs? Will this move into modernity be an abandonment of past generations? Will it be selling a bit of his soul?

There is certainly a bit of romantic nostalgia about Jesmark’s attempt to live as his father and grandfather had done. It is heartbreaking to think of the beautiful luzzu being destroyed—not just because of its beauty, but because of all that it means to Jesmark.

But the world of his father and grandfather is long gone. Things have changed. It really doesn’t matter if things are better or worse because of the change, it is the reality. Those changes aren’t sudden, but they accumulate year by year by year.

The film concludes with a paraphrase of “the Ship of Theseus”, an ancient thought experiment that dates back to ancient Greece. If you replace the pieces of a boat one at a time, when everything has been replaced is it still the same boat? As we watch Jesmark working to replace the bad wood on his luzzu, we know that this is just the most recent of many repairs that he, his father, and grandfather must have made on that boat. Is that really the same boat as his ancestors fished in?

But even more, this is a story about life. As we see the world change piece by piece—as societies shift bit by bit—as families go through good and bad times—as individuals face new situations and needs—are they still the same person, family, society, or world as before?

These are questions and processes that we face often—it could be at work, in churches, in schools, in personal relationships. We may often feel the pain of loss about what once was. But perhaps we can also find a way to celebrate the continuity of things through the changes.

Luzzu is playing in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.

My Name Is Pauli Murray – Historic Footnote

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“I want to see America be what she says she is in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America, be what you proclaim yourself to be!”

When filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West were making the Oscar-nominated RGB, they came across a citation that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had in her brief arguing for women’s rights before the Supreme Court. They thought it was worth finding out who this person was. My Name Is Pauli Murray is what they discovered. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks, Pauli Murray was arrested for not moving to the back of the bus. Decades before the Wilmington Lunch Counter Sit-In, Pauli and other students desegregated restaurants in DC. Pauli was one of the founders on the National Organization for Women. Essays Pauli wrote were part of the arguments laid before the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. Pauli made the case that the Fourteenth Amendment could be used to protect women’s rights (as Ginsberg argued). And yet, so few of us have heard of Pauli Murray.

Pauli Murray stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The film’s title makes it clear that this is an introduction. Pauli Murray’s name is one we should know, but don’t. And Pauli is an interesting personality. Pauli was something of a polymath. Pauli was an author, lawyer, poet, and eventually a priest. (Pauli was the first Black woman ordained in the Episcopal Church.) Pauli often practiced confrontation by typewriter, writing letters to people of power. When writing to FDR, Pauli would copy Eleanor Roosevelt, which lead to a friendship.

You may note my lack of pronouns here. Pauli was gender non-conforming, and in today’s language would probably identify as transexual. As a child Pauli dressed and acted as a boy. The family referred to Pauli as a boy/girl. For a time, Pauli rode the rails in the persona of a man. When facing surgery at one point, Pauli anticipated the doctors discovering undescended testes. (They didn’t.) This sense of inbetweenness is important for understanding some of the work that Pauli did.

Much of the film is made up tape recordings of Pauli reading from an autobiography as it was being written. It is important that we can hear that story in Pauli’s own voice. It is also important to hear the stories of people who knew Pauli and who have continued to build on that legacy.

What I miss from the film (and that is no doubt because of my ministerial background) is any real examination of the theological understandings Pauli developed while attending seminary later in life or serving as a priest. Given Pauli’s wonderful insights while studying the law, I would expect that Pauli could also bring that background and intellect to the realm of religion with similar insights.

Pauli Murray stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Pauli Murray truly was one of those unknown giants upon whose shoulders people are still standing seeing a future that can be made better. Pauli might well be seen as a footnote in the history of civil, women’s, and LGBTQ rights. To be a footnote does not lessen the impact. Indeed, we use footnotes as foundations for important ideas. Pauli may not have been someone most of the world see do important things, but great things were built upon Pauli’s work.

My Name is Pauli Murray in in select theaters and will be available in Prime Video beginning October 1.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg stars in MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Studios ©2021 PM PM Doc, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Photos courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Algren – A writer and his world

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Three Rules of Life:

  1. Never play cards with a guy named Doc.
  2. Never eat at a restaurant called Mom’s
  3. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Nelson Algren was one of the key writers of Post-World War II America. His writing was as plain-spoken as the above quote. But after a time, he fell out of the limelight, although he continued to be held in high regard by other writers. Michael Caplan brings him back to our attention in the documentary, Algren.

Algren’s writing often focused on the American underclass—especially as it was found in Chicago. He wrote about hustlers and prostitutes and addicts. His book The Man with the Golden Arm, about a poker dealer addicted to heroin, was the first winner of the National Book Award. When Algren wrote about his subjects, he saw them as people who have no other voice. He did not look down on them. He wrote with compassion and with respect.

The film shows us how Algren came to be drawn to those of society that we often overlook or avoid seeing. After he graduated college with a degree in journalism early in the Great Depression, he spent time as a hobo before becoming part of the Federal Writers Project. In the army at the end of the war, he became involved in the black market. He always was attracted to poker (although those who knew him said he was a terrible player).

The film also points out that Algren was less than pleased with the way his books were translated into films. He was especially upset with Otto Preminger’s version of The Man with the Golden Arm. These characters, who Algren treated with respect, Preminger held them in disdain.

The film is quotations from his writings, comments by people who knew him, and a large number of photos by Art Shay, an acclaimed photographer who served as a chronicler of Algren’s life in Chicago. The editing of all these images, and bits of texts, is very fast paced, bordering on phrenetic. I personally found this pace distracting, because there would be things to read on screen without enough time to read them.

Hearing his writing being read aloud (often by Studs Terkel) gives the viewer a sense of the poetry that Algren had within his prose. And to use such language to tell the stories of people who many of his readers might consider inferior to themselves was yet another way he elevated his subjects. His raising them up served as a kind of call to justice for how the world should see them and consider them.

Algren is in select theaters.

Photos courtesy of First Run Features.

Hudson – Odd couple road trip

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“Try not to run away from stuff that isn’t there.”

Hudson, the first feature film from Sean Daniel Cunningham, received a fair number of awards from film festivals. It is certainly the kind of film that festival audiences like to find—a sweet, feel good story from a new filmmaker. One of the pleasures of going to festivals is finding such nice films that most people will not get a chance to see. But Hudson is now available on Amazon. Apple TV, and VOD. That gives more people a chance to see the kinds of things that festivals provide.

Ryan (Gregory Lay, who also co-wrote with Cunningham) leaves New York City to go upstate a bit, ostensibly because of a film he’s going to be in. So he stops in to visit his cousin Hudson (David Neal Levin), whose mother recently died. Hudson is reclusive and morose. He shows Ryan a room that hasn’t been cleaned up and says, “What’s the point?” That is what his life has become.

But since Ryan can drive, Hudson asks him to take him to a special tree from their childhood to scatter his mother’s ashes. And the odd couple road trip begins. Before long, they have added a flaky, but very kind-hearted hitchhiker name Sunrise (Mary Catherine Greenawalt), who knows exactly where they want to go. A series of small adventures unfold, allowing the characters to discover their common connections. Eventually, when they are lost in the woods, they share their failures, which allows them to look ahead to what new life they can find.

This film combines road trip and odd couple (or in this case, trio) genres to offer viewers a window into lives that are beginning to find healing from their brokenness. But that healing only begins when they open themselves to their brokenness. They also find the hope of healing in this small community that they have become.

The Card Counter – Unforgivable?

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Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is the story of a solitary man hiding from the world. Or more precisely, a man hiding from the sin and guilt that he carries with him.

“William Tell” (Oscar Isaac) plays cards for a living. He’s very good at it.  He knows precisely the advantages the house holds in each game. He counts cards in blackjack (against the rule, but hard to enforce). He stays under the radar by never winning too big and by moving from one small casino to another. He lives in seedy motels. When he checks in, he covers everything with sheets to create a completely featureless world. His life is the personification of Stoicism.

Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / ©2021 Focus Features, LLC

His gambling skills catches the eye of La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), an agent who arranges for backers for gamblers. When the gambler wins, they split the winnings. If they lose, that loss will come out of future winnings. William isn’t moved by the promises of bigger winnings (and the chance of indebtedness). But there is an attraction between William and La Linda. William’s Stoic lifestyle, however, doesn’t have room for romance.

At a law enforcement convention (cops offer a good chance for William to win against them), William wanders into a presentation by Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe) about a new software program. Also in the room is a teenager, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), who recognizes William and gives him his number to call.

Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell and Tiffany Haddish as La Linda in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / ©2021 Focus Features, LLC

We need some back story at this point. William (PFC William Tillich) served at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War. Under the tutelage of Major Gordo, William tortured the prisoners there. His guilt and moral injury consume him, even after spending eight and a half years in military prison for his actions. Gordo, as a contractor, walked away with no punishment. For William the time in prison was comforting, with its routines and certainties. There he began to read. The book we see him with is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic who became Emperor of Rome. After release, William sets about his life in casinos, perhaps as a way of hiding from his past.

Cirk’s father also served at Abu Ghraib. He ended up killing himself. Cirk is out to avenge his father’s death by kidnapping, torturing, and killing Gordo. He seeks William’s help in this plan, but William knows that such hatred devours the soul and tries to dissuade Cirk. He asks Cirk to travel with him as a sort of protégé. William also calls La Linda to start in on the circuit and make more money. As William moves towards the big payday of the World Series of Poker, Cirk become impatient, and William and La Linda generate some sparks. As is often the case in Schrader films, there will have to be violence before redemption is found.

Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell and Tye Sheridan as Cirk in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / ©2021 Focus Features, LLC

In press notes, Schrader define his genre of films as “they typically involve a man alone in a room wearing a mask, and the mask is his occupation.” William Tell, whether in prison, his spare motel room (his personal prison) or in the midst of a busy casino is such a man alone in a mask. The man behind the mask we only really discover in his thoughts as he journals. Those thoughts are about the weight of the sin that he carries and the lack of the possibility of forgiveness for those sins.

Sin and redemption are key themes in Schrader films. (He directed Hardcore, American Gigolo, and First Reformed. His screenplays also include Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Mosquito Coast.) There are no filmmakers better at dealing with those topics than Schrader.  Schrader’s Calvinist background is often present in his films. It is not explicit in this film, but it is present nonetheless.

Sin here is tied to unspeakable violence. William cannot forgive himself for participating. And we are subtly reminded that he was doing so in the name of America. Perhaps we are willing to look away and move on (without admitting the sin or the need of forgiveness), but the moral weight of what William did is a burden he continues to carry. Here is a man who knows guilt—not as an abstract, but as a daily presence in his life. Even when he was in jail, he was seeking more punishment in a search for expiation. Now he seeks to live behind his mask and be disconnected for the world.

Oscar Isaac stars as William Tell in THE CARD COUNTER, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / ©2021 Focus Features, LLC

Are William’s sins forgivable? We want to answer yes, but how can we say that without a severe price being paid? And if we see our own culpability in his sins, how can we not wonder the same about our guilt? The real question isn’t about the sin, but how do we find redemption? William sought to survive anonymously, but in the end it will take far more for his life to be redeemed.

The Card Counter is playing in theaters.

Last Night in Rozzie – Compounded lies

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Last Night in Rozzie, from director Sean Gannet, opens with a chaotic memory of an event that happened in 1994. We can’t really tell what’s happening, but slowly we learn what happened that night and the effect it had on the two boys involved—and the ripples it created in other lives.

Ronnie Russo (Neil Brown, Jr.) is a New York attorney tied up in a complex corporate legal issue. He’s trying to tie up many loose ends for things to be taken care of quickly. In the midst of this, he gets a call from a childhood friend, Joey Donovan (Jeremy Sisto), who is sick in Boston. They’ve had no contact for the last 25 years, but Joey needs a big favor. For reasons we only learn later, Ronnie leaves his legal colleagues in a lurch, to go up to Boston to help Joey.

Joey, we learn is dying. He wants Ronnie to help him see his son, who has been kept away from him for ten years. Joey was married to Pattie Barry (Nicky Whelan), the girl that Ronnie had a crush on back in school. So Ronnie develops a plan to try to get the boy to see Joey without Pattie knowing what he’s doing. The past relationship between Pattie and Ronnie seems to still be alive. But how can Ronnie fulfill Joey’s dying wish and still be honest with Pattie?

The film is centered around the idea of fatherhood—especially broken father-son relationships. There are no positive father-figures in the story. Joey’s father was abusive. Ronnie didn’t know his father (and his mother has no information about him). Joey has been an absent father—and we learn there may be a good reason that Pattie has kept their son from him.

It is also a story that is filled with lies. Joey is less than forthcoming with Ronnie about why he’s not seen his son. Ronnie dishonestly doesn’t tell Pattie about his contact with Joey and the reason he’s back in town. Pattie has lied to her son about Joey. All of these lies just compound upon each other. And the story finally comes around to the biggest lie, the one that we see in that opening chaotic scene from the past.

We do learn why Ronnie is so willing to try to help Joey. We learn that on that fateful night 25 years ago, their lives went in two very different directions. And we discover that Ronnie feels a great obligation because of that. The consequences of that night continue to play out in various ways—and will likely continue on through Joey’s son.

Last Night in Rozzie is in select theaters and available on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Gravitas Ventures.

23 Walks – A little different love story

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We may think that a love story is a love story. They meet. They clash. They become friends. They fall out. They reconcile. Life is beautiful. Those are the typical beats in such a story. They are all there in 23 Walks, written and directed by Paul Morrison, but it all seems a bit different because the characters are a bit older. That brings some new dimensions to the film.

Dave (Dave Johns) and Fern (Alison Steadman) first meet while walking their dogs in a park in North London. Fern is a bit grumpy that Dave’s dog, while perfectly behaved, is not on a leash. They begin to run into each other on their daily walks, and are soon planning to meet on the walks. Little by little a friendship develops. But they are both in their sixties. This is not a story about raging passion. It is a much mellower journey into the possibility of some kind of new future.

The age of the characters slows down the story just a bit—and that’s fitting. (I move slower now than I used to, too.) Because they are older, they have learned that things can happen over time. But their ages mean that they each have histories. Those pasts have brought joys and pains. They may make them wary about this relationship. It does lead them to keep some important things secret—which leads to serious problems.

It is those histories that bring the new perspective to this romance. In a more traditional love story, we are looking toward a future and the possibilities that holds. While we do hope for a wonderful future for Dave and Fern, we know that for them, this relationship is going to have to deal with the past as well, because those pasts linger in our lives.

Their futures are complicated. Both are about to lose their homes. (No, the answer to their problems isn’t to move in together.) Both have family issues they must deal with—not because of a lack of love, but because of so much love. But perhaps in that tension between their difficult pasts and their uncertain futures, they can find a present in one another that will bring some happiness.

The story is told with sweetness, but it is not cloying. These are characters that are firmly based in reality and common people. They are aging, but still have a good deal of life in them that they are seeking to maximize. The love that grows between them has that same sense of reality. It is grounded in a relationship that feeds them both. Any physical manifestations of love grow from that, which puts it all on a firm foundation. The love we see is a warm-hearted enjoyment of each other. It is the kind of love that those characters in traditional love stories with younger people hope they can grow into over time.

23 Walks is in select theaters and available on VOD.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Complex Simplicity

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For many people, Tammy Faye Bakker is probably best known for being the butt of jokes and SNL skits. Her outlandish makeup was a trademark that was easy to satirize, as was her singing and onscreen demeanor. But what of the person behind all that? The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter, gives us a very sympathetic look at this woman who was an icon to televangelism, and who also became a champion of LGBTQ rights. The film is based on an excellent documentary by the same name from 2000 directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Screenwriter Abe Sylvia has done a masterful job of expanding and transforming that documentary into a narrative film. (Although, there are some small bits of dramatic license, but nothing that really does harm to the story.)

The film follows Tammy Faye’s life from a child in International Falls, Minnesota, where she was somewhat discouraged from going to church because her mother had divorced and remarried. But Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) was so attracted to the church that she went anyway, and when she spoke in tongues, she was readily accepted. When at Bible college, she met and fell in love with Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield), who even then was proclaiming the prosperity gospel. They soon married and set out on the road as traveling evangelists.

Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” and Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

When their travels took them to the area of the fledgling televangelist Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye started doing a kid’s show for him, which Jim leveraged into “The 700 Club”, the first Christian talk show. Soon, Robertson wanted that show for himself, so Jim and Tammy Faye started their own televangelist network (PTL) which grew rapidly. The vision was always far ahead of resources, and debt was a constant problem, especially after building a theme park that rivaled Disneyland. Through it all the couple lived a luxurious life. In time, Jim Bakker was eventually charged with and convicted of fraud and sent to prison.

While the documentary covered all this history with archival footage, this film takes us behind the curtain to see all this taking place through Tammy Faye’s perspective. And that allows us to see a multi-faceted person who has more to her than we may suspect.

The film opens with a scene (reenacted from the doc) of Tammy Faye at a TV studio having her makeup removed so that more camera-friendly makeup can be put on. While the makeup comes off, she talks about all her makeup. We then discover that some of it is permanent. Tammy Faye concludes, “Yeah, this is who I am.” We are struck by how the real and the persona are blended in such a way that it’s hard to separate one from the other. As the film progresses, we see Tammy Faye as someone who is blended in many ways.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

One of those ways is how she seems to be in a constant tension between her stolid Midwestern upbringing (personified in her mother, played by Cherry Jones) and the lavish lifestyle that surrounds her. Certainly, Jim’s messages of prosperity as a sign of faith gives some spiritual cover for that (even if a dubious theology). Even though she’s very comfortable with all the luxury, there is always her mother’s disapproval of it.

The film also makes a point that Tammy Faye was more than just Jim’s wife. (That is truer here than in the documentary.) To be sure, much of her life, its rises and falls, were caused by Jim and his dreams (and lack of solid morals), but there were ways that Tammy Faye had her own sense of power and her own desires. A key illustration is a scene in which Jim, Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are all sitting down at a barbecue to talk business. The women are all left on the periphery. That is, until Tammy Faye, baby in arms, pulls her own chair up to the table to insert herself into the discussion.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

It should be noted that Chastain is one of the producers of the film as well as the star. When she first saw the documentary, she was moved to make it into a film and bought the rights. There is a certain “Time’s Up” feeling to that place-at-the-table scene. This view of Tammy Faye as one pushing for women’s rights adds another layer to her persona in the film.

Later, Tammy Faye became the first leader among Evangelicals to show great compassion to AIDS sufferers, which led her to be compassionate toward LGBTQ people in general. She understood them to be beloved of God. She may or may not have approved of their lives, but she saw them first and foremost as God’s children. This at a time when many of the other televangelist were referring to AIDS as a plague sent from God to punish gays.

Randy Havens as “Steve Pieters” and Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

After watching this film, I watched the documentary for comparison. While there are some differences in how the stories are told, the films together serve to give a fuller picture of the events and of Tammy Faye. The impression I had of Tammy Faye after watching both films was that the best description of her is “simple”. (By that I mean uncomplicated, not mentally deficient.) The picture this film gives us of Tammy Faye is a woman who is guileless. In spite of her garish makeup, with Tammy Faye, what you see is what you get.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel McFadden. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

That simplicity applies to her gospel message as well. The “Gospel according to Tammy Faye” is “God loves you. He really does.” As one trained in theology, I know that there are volumes written to describe the Gospel and the many nuances that grow out of God’s relationship to the world. Back when the Bakkers were riding the wave of televangelism, I would have likely belittled them for many valid reasons. But I also can say that that simple statement of God’s love is truly a full statement of the Gospel.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye opens in theaters September 17.