shakercoola 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.

Michael Kleen (makleen2) 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.

avik-basu1889 There is a scene in 'Christine' where Christine Chubbuck's boss Michael at the news station shows her a news segment of a rival news network revolving around fat people. In response, she voiced her refusal to get involved with anything like that because to her, it's 'exploitative'. This is ironic because whenever there's a film about a tragedy that happened to real life ordinary characters in the past, there is always the risk that the film might veer into exploitative territories. Thankfully, 'Christine' stays respectful to its central character. I don't know much about the real Christine Chubbuck, so I can only comment on the Christine Chubbuck that is presented in the film. The Christine in the film feels like a real, complicated and three-dimensional character. She is clearly flawed, but the director remains sensitive in his treatment of her in the film.The period setting of 1970s America plays a thematic and contextual role in the film. This is post-Watergate America, one can sense the desperation, cynicism and the restlessness of the era. One can also feel that Christine Chubbuck is a woman of the new age who believes in the Feminist movement and the Women's Liberation movement. She is presented as a character who is on one hand plagued by acute loneliness, but one the other hand it is suggested that she is someone who deliberately blocks people out of her lives and doesn't open up to anyone. This resistance to having a meaningful connection with others or her inability to open up to anyone properly could be down to the fact that as a strong independent feminist woman working in the male dominated industry of journalism, she feels voicing her insecurities and making herself look vulnerable will make her look weak. The film does well to show how the confluence of a number of factors like loneliness, a frictional relationship with your parents, a directionless job,etc. can lead to an inescapable feeling of depression. Rebecca Hall pretty much single-handedly carries the film. It's a comprehensive performance where she uses her physicality, her eyes, her voice and everything at her disposal to create this complicated character on screen.But the film gets hampered a bit due to some of the writing. There are scenes where the dialogue becomes far too flowery which contradicts the matter-of-fact like dialogue of the other scenes. There are directorial choices here and there which also felt too heavy-handed. An example of this will be the very first scene of the film where we see a big carton with the word 'FRAGILE' written on it being inserted in the room at the background while we see Christine in the foreground.It's not a perfect film, but at least the director gets tricky job of the treatment of his central character right.

chet19 Christine's story is a depressing one, and 99% of the audience knows what's going to happen at the end. So the director has to be exceptional to hold our interest and keep the drama, but he fails at both. The character Christine is pretty depressed and a little weird/unstable from the very beginning. There's no watching her fall into depression; she's already there. That detracts A LOT from any character development we may want to see. Instead, we see someone depressed during the beginning, middle, and end. No changes. Boring. He director tells her to go cover a big dangerous fire, but she disobeys and instead chooses to cover a minor boundary dispute between two counties. She also talks to herself and pretends to interview people. Yes, she is THAT boring, and this movie follows suit.