CHRISTINE – Review

Rebecca Hall as Christine Chubbuck in CHRISTINE. Courtesy of the Orchard Distribution ©

In CHRISTINE, Rebecca Hall gives a gripping performance as Christine Chubbuck, an ambitious 29-year-old TV reporter under pressure in her career and personal life, who committed suicide on a live news broadcast in 1974. The film is loosely based on Chubbuck and focuses on the last days of her life, as she faced enormous pressure at work while coping with an unraveling self, as her thirtieth birthday approached.

Rather than a grim march to a known conclusion, this fictionalized telling of Chubbuck’s story plays out almost like a thriller. The film’s story deviates in significant ways from Chubbuck’s actual life but the changes serve the narrative well, as the TV journalist bounces from a driven, intelligent, charismatic woman who is set on being the best at her job, in a time when gender discrimination was still the work place norm, to a fragile person barely in touch with reality. Hall is so intense in this role, she seems to electrify the screen at times, as she captures Chubbuck’s fiery ambition, her internal meltdown and her heartbreaking humanity.

CHRISTINE opens with an unsettling scene, as a confident and professional Chubbuck seems to be interviewing beleaguered President Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal enveloping him. The scene abruptly reveals she is only practicing her on-camera interview skills, but Chubbuck’s embrace of the part she is playing and her sardonic use of the old phrase “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you” are eerily unsettling. The disconnect between Chubbuck’s fantasy about interviewing Nixon and her actual job as a community field reporter in quiet Sarasota, Florida, is jarring.

The fact-inspired story of this film directed by Antonio Campos and written by Craig Shilowich is unsettling as well, with strong parallels to the fictional “Network.” But Chubbuck’s ambition to be an Edward R. Murrow-type investigative journalist as TV news is shifting to the “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy is less the focus of this drama, than the gender discrimination she faced and her own inner unraveling. In one revealing scene, her boss Michael (Tracy Letts) tells Chubbuck that her problem is that she is a feminist, as if that sums up her erratic behavior.

The major strength of this film is Rebecca Hall’s riveting performance, maybe her best yet. Hall wrings out every nuance and drop of drama in this heartbreaking portrait of a real person.

Hall does get help from a supporting cast that includes Michael C. Hall, as the co-anchor with whom she is enamored, and Letts as her boss, in another strong performance following his remarkable one in INDIGNATION. J. Smith-Cameron plays Christine’s mother Peg, who shares an apartment with her daughter but sometimes seems like the less responsible party. Christine refers to Peg as her roommate, as if embarrassed to say she lives with her mother, but still craves her mother’s attention like a little girl. Maria Dizzia plays Christine’s co-worker Jean, who seems to want to be her friend as well as her competitor. John Cullum plays distracted station owner Bob Anderson, who is looking to promote some of the Sarasota station’s on-air talent for his new, larger-market Baltimore station.

Everyone at the Sarasota station is hopeful about promotion but Chubbuck is nearly desperate for it. There are hints at home about an emotional breakdown at her previous job in Boston, and talk about bouts of depression, but Chubbuck withholds that from her co-workers, like nearly everything else.

Chubbuck’s seeming descent into madness, under both career pressure and personal disintegration, provides the juggernaut engine of this film. Rebecca Hall does an outstanding job of humanizing this difficult, confused, hard-working person, getting beyond the sensationalism inherent in her tragic story to the real person at its center. When station boss Michael tells his staff the station is on shaky ground and needs to boost ratings with “juicier” stories, idealistic Chubbuck argues back in favor of a high standard of reporting. Yet when forced to comply to keep her job, ambitious Chubbuck works tirelessly and talks a good game, but her choices of what to shoot and what to cover betray that she has no idea what is going to connect with the station’s audience.

An inability to connect with and understand people is a central issue in Chubbuck’s life. While coping with her career challenges, Chubbuck faces health issues at the same time, which she conceals from co-workers. She is unable or unwilling to connect with her co-workers, evading their invitations to non-work activities, even from anchorman George, on whom she has a crush. In her off-time, she volunteers with disabled children, entertaining them with puppet shows that reveal more human insights than her own life shows. Her divorced mother’s budding romance, with someone new she’s met, leaves Chubbuck angry and frustrated at her inability to make progress with George.

The career and personal frustration mounts as Bob makes his decisions about the Baltimore jobs. As we near the film’s end, Hall’s exploding character suddenly calms down. The end is inevitable but still gut-wrenching, a commentary on a society too hard on the fragile.

CHRISTINE is a powerful, taut drama, that succeeds largely thanks to Rebecca Hall’s hair-raising and heartbreaking performance, one that deserves notice come awards season.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars