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.
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.