Event
Christine
Rebecca Hall stars in director Antonio Campos’ third feature film, a behind-the-scenes look at the news crew at a 1970’s television station. Aspiring newswoman Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) finds herself butting heads with her boss, who pushes for sensationalized stories to drive up ratings.
Based on true events, this intimate and sensitive portrait of a woman on the brink is grounded by Hall’s impeccable and transformative performance. Also starring are Michael C. Hall (“Dexter”), Maria Dizzia (“Orange Is The New Black”), and Timothy Simons (“Veep”).
Plagued by self-doubt and a tumultuous home life, Christine’s diminishing hope begins to rise when an on-air co-worker (Michael C. Hall) initiates a friendship which ultimately becomes yet another unrequited love. Disillusioned as her world continues to close in on her, Christine takes a dark and surprising turn.
Based on true events, Campos’ intimate and sensitive portrait of a woman on the brink is grounded by Hall’s impeccable and transformative performance as Christine. Rounding out the supporting cast are superlative performances by Michael C. Hall (“Dexter”), Tracy Letts (“Homeland,” Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright), Maria Dizzia (“Orange Is The New Black”), Timothy Simons (“Veep”) and J. Smith-Cameron (“Margaret”).
"A masterful piece of filmmaking. In Campos’ first two features, 2008’s AFTERSCHOOL and 2012’s SIMON KILLER, he helped establish the visual immediacy and sonic texture that’s become a hallmark of the Borderline Films collective that he shares with Sean Durkin (MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE) and Josh Mond (JAMES WHITE). With CHRISTINE, Campos applies that style to a movie that — grim subject matter aside — is actually fairly mainstream. He shoots Shilowich’s script cleanly and clearly, balancing biographical/ethnographic detail with the kind of intense focus on one character’s psychology that has been his trademark. (It’s) vivid, intense, and artful."
"A thrumming, heartsore, sometimes viciously funny character study, sensitive both to the singularities of Chubbuck’s psychological collapse and the indignities weathered by any woman in a 1970s newsroom. The movie is a delicately balanced and apportioned ensemble piece. Michael C. Hall is typically excellent. Likeliest to be remembered as the film that finally made good on Rebecca Hall’s flinty, often under-challenged gifts. By turns shrilly frightening and blearily sucker-punched, her performance bears improbable comparison with Natalie Portman’s Oscar-winning BLACK SWAN turn as a study of self-disarrangement from the inside out. Invigorated by a top-drawer ensemble with Rebecca Hall discomfitingly electric in the best role she’s yet been offered."
"In Hall, (the filmmaker) has the perfect actor to convey Chubbuck’s internal struggle in a manner that’s devastating."
"Ms. Hall's performance makes you believe that something profound is at stake, the movie noncommittally nibbles at the edge of larger meaning, nodding at current events."
"Striding through this, and commanding almost every scene, is Rebecca Hall, who earns our sympathy, as the best actors do, by steeling herself not to plead for it."
"As much as it signals the dawn of a more exploitative brand of journalism, the film also sees Christine as the victim of a sexist newsroom culture that punished women of substance."
