Christine (2016)

Waste of time

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

By this retelling of this true story it was important there was sensitivity and dignity. Also, it was important to look at different themes - pain of humiliation, career crisis, and bipolar disorder - not just a portrayal of a march to death. Christine is a gripping drama with an impeccable central performance from Rebecca Hall who helps us understand newscaster Chubbuck's psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by a woman in a 1970s news station - she becomes the manifestation of the lack of hope.

Events leading to journalist Christine Chubbuck's 1974 on-air suicide are recounted in Christine (2016), a bleak but potent film written by Craig Shilowich and directed by Antonio Campos. Strong performances by its lead actors and its visual authenticity make Christine the best overlooked film of 2016.Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is a sincere but troubled woman working as a reporter for a local news station in Sarasota, Florida. She lives with her mother, Peg (J. Smith-Cameron), and performs puppet shows at a children's hospital on the weekends. Her life begins to spiral out of control when, approaching 30, she discovers she has a cyst on one of her ovaries and may never have children.Her boss, Michael (Tracy Letts), is concerned about falling ratings and wants Christine to cover more sensational stories. This professional dilemma is compounded by the arrival of station owner Bob Andersen (John Cullum), who wants to move some personnel to Baltimore. Christine is passed over in favor of anchor George Peter Ryan (Michael C. Hall) and sports anchor Andrea Kirby (Kim Shaw). This is a double-blow because Christine had an unrequited crush on George.I won't reveal how the film ends, but you probably already guessed. Rebecca Hall, who also starred in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) and The Dinner (2017), is outstanding as Christine Chubbuck, and won several awards for her effort. I'm not sure this film would have been nearly as good without her performance. She disappeared into the role, bringing her character to life with all the emotion and idiosyncrasies of a real person.This film's authenticity is also incredible. If you could somehow capture the look and feel of a decade, Christine does it. 1970s period pieces usually feature larger than life characters and situations. This film does the exact opposite-it shows normal people at a normal job, who happened to be involved in an incredibly tragic incident.But Christine is not entirely accurate. The film depicts Christine living with her mother, which was true, but her older brother also lived with them. I can't recall any mention of her siblings in the film. Also, in the film, Christine procrastinates getting a cyst removed from her ovary, but in real life she had the surgery a year prior to her suicide. Neither of these alterations negatively affect the film. The filmmakers needed to show how the surgery affected her in the run-up to her suicide, which would have been difficult if it occurred months before the events depicted in the movie.Christine confronts an issue in journalism that continues to be debated to this day. In the film, Christine is constantly butting heads with her boss over the definition of news. Michael is concerned about their station's low ratings and wants her to focus on more controversial stories. Christine doesn't think reporting on stories that interest people is real journalism.The push to report on crime and disaster deeply conflicts with Christine's self-image, and she frames her suicide as a statement against sensationalism in news. "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in 'blood and guts', and in living color, you are going to see another first-attempted suicide," she says before she pulls a pistol and shoots herself behind her right ear.The message couldn't be any clearer, but don't expect Christine to spoon-feed you answers. The movie is like a snapshot of one moment in time. We don't know how Christine's family and coworkers deal with the tragedy, or whether it affects that station's approach to the news. Its open-endedness enhances the film's final impact.

I have to start by saying that all the negative reviews calling the film "boring," "too slow," or "uninteresting" must have been submitted by people who have not experienced this kind of mental illness first hand. I have, and the way this story was told hit the nail on the head. This film may be uncomfortable for some to watch due to the subject matter, but the slow, grinding, gutwrenching nature of depression was beautifully captured in Christine. If you've ever been to that dark place of desparation, then you'll appreciate this film. I already knew how the story was going to end, which made it even harder to watch at times, especially since I knew it was based on the true story of Christine Chubbuck, the news anchor who shot herself in the head on live television. Watching Christine teeter back and forth between the hope of bettering her circumstances, and the painful descent back down brought me to tears at times. One scene that really caught me was at around three-quarters into the movie. In the middle of conducting an interview, she has a temporary mental breakdown. She calmly tells the interviewee that they will continue the interview at a later date, and leaves the room. She runs into the bathroom and cracks, bursting into a tormented sob session. The moment her friend runs in and asks if she's okay, Christine instantaneously straightens herself up and says she's fine. A moment like that is even more haunting knowing that eventually, Christine will later take her own life with the cameras rolling, and all aimed at her.

I never knew anything about the true story of Christine Chubbuck when I saw this biopic detailing the last year of her life. Needless to say, this fact gave the film an extra impact, as the ending comes as quite a jolt. Chubbuck was a television journalist who worked for a local news channel in Florida. She became nationally famous when she committed suicide live on air during a news broadcast in 1974. She was a troubled individual who was frustrated with her trivial work assignments and also had difficulties in forming relationships with men. The former issue is exacerbated by the fact that the news programme she is part of has failing ratings and so her manager aims to cover more sensationalist material with the motto 'if it bleeds, it leads'. This leaves Chubbuck's human-interest stories marginalised to the point of irrelevance. While her relationship issues stem from the fact that Christine is a genuine oddball who seems to have some social condition, which renders her both forthright and awkward in one-to-one conversations. She only really seems at home when she is on the television.I found this to be a very involving drama which brought me very much to mind of The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) which was another early 70's period piece that focused on another social misfit who ended up making the news for a notorious incident. Both films share a downbeat tone and both sport fantastic performances in their central roles. In Christine it is Rebecca Hall who immerses herself in the persona of Christine, it really is a very good example of proper acting with Hall tackling a complex character to perfection. Despite her spiky nature I really did care about this woman and that is a large testament to Hall's skills. The other main element in which I got a kick out of was the recreation of the early 70's in all of its beige glory. It was beautifully done and helped considerably in setting the tone of events which follow. Ultimately, I found this true story to be one well worth knowing about and the film did a good job of capturing and presenting it.