Really Surprised!

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Christine is a film with a strong likable lead character, that lacks in its vision and complementary pieces.I can't see how you wouldn't like this character, Rebecca Hall is terrific. My problem is why the film is made. She shot herself on live television, so that warrants a film being made? So her story is not worthy of being told if she didn't. She was apposed to sensationalizing things to get people interested, but that is why most people will watch this film because she shot herself on television.... That is not why I watched this film, just saying. The ending may be factual but it is only a hindrance to the film in my opinion as there is no resolution, just a feeling of sombreness. Some reviews say it is trying to be a comedy and that she is boring, I don't agree with either of those statements and the character is lovely. However, I don't think there is enough here to be a film, though I liked what it had to offer.

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.

Rebecca Hall is mesmerizing in her portrayal of Sarasota, Florida TV news personality, Christine Chubbuck, who shot and killed herself on air in 1974. Since the release of this film, there have been think pieces written using Chubbuck's suicide as a touchstone for musings on the nature of journalism, then and now, and its impact on her actions. But what we see in this film, and which likely cuts closer to the truth, is that Chubbuck was a young woman with crippling emotional problems who was finally overwhelmed by them. Unmarried and a virgin at 29 going on 30, yet desperately wanting a husband and children; needing a cystic ovary removed reducing her chances of ever getting pregnant; feeling thwarted in her ambition to move forward in her on-air career (for which she seemed hopelessly unsuited in an era when happy talk newscasts with young, perky blonde newsreaders was becoming THE format du jour); still living with her mother (in what looked like her childhood bedroom), an aging woman trying to live the hippie lifestyle; having a hopeless crush on a co-worker already involved with another - one doesn't need to look any further to understand the sense of utter hopelessness that drove her to put a gun to her head. The strength of the film is in Hall's characterization. We see Chubbuck's extreme awkwardness and abrasiveness in almost all her social interactions; her desperate need for close relationships yet pushing people away when they reach out to her. Her pain is almost palpable. Chubbuck believed at 29 she was a failure at life. There doesn't seem to be anything more to her suicide than that. The film perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the times. In fact, it looks and feels as though it was shot in 1974, rather than 2016 (the array of polyester clothing is amazing, and the soundtrack is 1974 top 40 hits and Watergate). Warning: this is not an uplifting film. It's the sad story of a sad woman that has transmuted into Internet urban legend because of the myths surrounding what happened to the videotape of her death.

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.