Kate Plays Christine premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival at the same time as Christine. Both films focus on Christine Chubbuck, a local investigative television journalist who committed suicide during a live broadcast. I never heard about Chubbuck before these films premiered, but the sudden cluster of interest sparked mine, and I decided to watch both films in one sitting when time and availability permitted. Please allow me to dissuade anyone from viewing both movies in one sitting—it is a thoroughly depressing and bleak experience that I do not recommend, which may be obvious to anyone else reading the description of these films. Gee, watching almost four hours of events leading up to a person shooting herself in the head can be dispiriting. Who would have thought?!? It sounds obvious to me in retrospect, but as someone who enjoys watching several movies that have common themes, it seemed instinctual to do so.
Unlike Christine, Kate Plays Christine is a documentary that alleges to document Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparation to play Chubbuck in a movie that is not actually in production. So is it still a documentary if you are preparing for something that will never happen? Sort of because viewers get a glimpse of what it is like for an actor to physically and mentally transform into her character. It felt like what a documentary about Cindy Sherman could be like if it was focused solely on her, and not someone’s relationship to her like Guest of Cindy Sherman. There was also insight into other actors’ approach to their roles in the nonexistent film and their mental struggles, embrace of life or suicidal tendencies. There was an empathetic approach to occupying the same space as and taking the same actions as their characters in the present day to understand them fully.
Kate Plays Christine’s drawback is that after watching Rebecca Hall’s performance in Christine, Sheil’s ability to transform is always going to fall short in comparison, and indeed when we get glimpses of the real Chubbuck way too late in the film, Hall’s representation is pitch perfect whereas Sheil’s is weaker and softer. Also the tan is laughable, and the hair becomes an inconvenient, overpowering prop that acts more as an obstacle than an enhancement in the approach to the character. I don’t blame Sheil for this defect. The film spends the majority of the time getting input from people who know of Chubbuck, but did not actually know and love her.
This distinction between the reality and the image is crucial because those who only know the story, but not the person, most of them view Chubbuck with disdain as mannish, hard, a waste of a bullet. They acknowledge that she was treated as the office scapegoat, but simultaneously perpetuate the unfair image. They are turned off by her lack of softness, her lack of a boyfriend or friends. She is treated like a punchline to an unfunny joke in these interviews. I guess that speaking ill of the dead isn’t always frowned upon. It takes eighty-one minutes of a one hundred twelve minute film to talk to someone who knew, loved and mourned Chubbuck to get some insight into her as a real person.
Kate Plays Christine is riveting when we finally get to hear from people who loved her. They admit that she was actually not that great at her job, but she had strong relationships and was a countercultural sympathetic ear and friend to those who occupied the sidelines of society, which explained why she was not the best of interviewers. She was simply too good at listening to others. Chubbuck was not a showboat, which makes her suicide more shocking and incongruous. She becomes what she hates-if it bleeds it leads, a protest, an act of anger and instruction. The therapist suggestion that suicide can be an act of revenge against those who harmed you is a feasible way to explain the relationship between her work frustration, her mental disability and her final act. It is about depression, but it is also anger. Sadly I feel like Sheil somewhat misses the boat by characterizing Chubbuck as “pathetic” in her final scene. As someone who had a friend who may or may not have committed suicide, I’d never call that person pathetic. I reserve pathetic for those who kill others. I am intrigued by how others are so disgusted when a woman commits suicide and are so desperate to make it about failing at conventional relationships. It is a jarring experience that even in death, women get completely different treatment.
The bonus features are uneven and the fact that they are long is usually a danger sign. Another detracting factor is the lack of closed captioning though the DVD claims that it is available. There was a missed parallel moment in the bonus feature that should have appeared in the body of the documentary regarding the ethics of filming people in real life. A man hits on the actor verbally and physically touches while she is filming a scene, but because she feels like she is in danger, she does not reveal that she is at work. When he finds out, he blames her for the literal unfolding of his life: his lack of opportunity to explore a creative career and having to fight for his country, which is my characterization of the encounter whereas Sheil does rebuke herself for not acting honestly during this exchange because he was behaving authentically, and she essentially lied. Um, no. If she had elicited his attention purposely for it to be captured on camera, I would agree, but he authentically came to her uninvited then proceeded to blame her for his entire life when at most, she simply embarrassed him by inadvertently at best, capturing his lack of game and at worst, his aggressive, unwanted contact that he would never have pulled on a guy and somehow this is her fault. Fuck that! Do better or don’t sign the release, but the idea that she owed him a complete, full disclosure mission statement for her presence in a public space because he noticed her and decided that he wanted to be a part of her day is complete BS. The expectation of what women owe men that are complete strangers, and they have no relationship to is germane to people’s lack of sympathy to Chubbuck. How dare she have mental illness, be single and care more about work. If she wanted to be more sympathetic, she should have pumped out a few kids, had a sexual relationship with a guy and been less ambitious, the bitch! Women don’t shoot themselves in the head in public for all to see. They quietly take pills or slit their wrists like ladies. Only a man gets to shoot everyone then himself and gets sympathy. What is wrong with society!?!
Kate Plays Christine is a must see documentary for actors interested in the process of becoming a character and provides more insight into the real life person in the last half hour of the film than Christine. While it explores the sensational aspects of the film, it never surrenders to it and feels somewhat condemned by its prurient impulses by explicitly asking why do we want to see this film and why are we really interested in Chubbuck. Still if you are just in it to learn about Chubbuck, you have to slog through a lot of what can be considered by some pretentious musings and Calvin Klein commercial moments of contemplating Chubbuck’s Florida to get there so it may not be worth your time if you have no interest in the actor’s transformation.
My harshest criticism is reserved for the dog’s humans: don’t take your dog to see fireworks on the beach, and if you are dumb enough to do so, when your dog loudly expresses terror, leave, you unfeeling bastards!