I was watching the Susan Hayward movie "With a Song in My Heart" a while back. It's one of those biopic melodramas from the 1950s where the thinnest of plots is strung together with a lot of songs and glamorous gowns. The whole thing is mostly mediocre, but then there was this scene at the end where Hayward, in character as singer Jane Froman, performs a concert for a bunch of U. S. service men in WWII and sings one patriotic number after another. I've never been a huge fan of Hayward, but in that moment, something clicked and the whole movie came alive on the strength of her screen presence. I sat there thinking "so THIS is why people like Susan Hayward." My entire opinion about that movie is colored by that scene, and I think back more fondly on it than I otherwise would have because of it.
Something similar happens with Jessica Chastain in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." This is mediocre biopic material all the way. But there's a scene at the end where Faye is performing for a congregation after all of her public troubles have decimated any confidence she has that she's going to find a sympathetic audience. It deftly blends the concert as it's actually happening with a fantasy playing out in Faye's head, and the entire movie comes alive in a way it hadn't up until then. It's all because of Chastain, who gives one of the performances of the year in a movie that doesn't deserve her. At any one point during the movie, it's hard to take it seriously or even care much about these washed up people -- I mean with the world the way it is right now, don't we have bigger concerns than a televangelist couple from the 1980s? But when taken in aggregate and thinking back on the movie after I had a chance to process the entire thing, I realized what a tremendous performance Chastain gave. It's almost a greater testament to a person's acting ability when they can make such a huge impression in a weak movie than when they knock it out of the park in a movie that's as good as they are.
While my personal favorite among the nominated actresses this year is Olivia Colman in "The Lost Daughter," there would be no shame in giving Chastain her due for this movie.
Grade: B.
Something similar happens with Jessica Chastain in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." This is mediocre biopic material all the way. But there's a scene at the end where Faye is performing for a congregation after all of her public troubles have decimated any confidence she has that she's going to find a sympathetic audience. It deftly blends the concert as it's actually happening with a fantasy playing out in Faye's head, and the entire movie comes alive in a way it hadn't up until then. It's all because of Chastain, who gives one of the performances of the year in a movie that doesn't deserve her. At any one point during the movie, it's hard to take it seriously or even care much about these washed up people -- I mean with the world the way it is right now, don't we have bigger concerns than a televangelist couple from the 1980s? But when taken in aggregate and thinking back on the movie after I had a chance to process the entire thing, I realized what a tremendous performance Chastain gave. It's almost a greater testament to a person's acting ability when they can make such a huge impression in a weak movie than when they knock it out of the park in a movie that's as good as they are.
While my personal favorite among the nominated actresses this year is Olivia Colman in "The Lost Daughter," there would be no shame in giving Chastain her due for this movie.
Grade: B.