Film Review: ‘Kate Plays Christine’

A thought provoking documentary explores a real life tragedy through art.

 It’s a popular cliché to say the purpose of art is to offer a sense of catharsis to the viewer’s life. While the idea may very well be true, what’s neglected in this thought is the collateral damage that can be caused in its formation. While an audience may be able to sit with emotional discomfort experienced from a distance, those involved in the creation can risk becoming too close to the darkness of their subjects in their quest for truth.

This phenomenon is explored in Kate Plays Christine, a new film that merges documentary and performance to explore a shocking moment in TV history. At the center of the movie is the actress Kate Lyn Sheil (House of Cards, Equals), who has been asked to portray Christine Chubbuck, a Florida newscaster who in 1974 committed suicide on live TV. With almost all traces of her removed from the Internet beyond (and the footage of her death rumored to be locked away), Kate and the film venture to Sarasota, Florida to explore the life Chubbuck left behind and what may have led her to pull the trigger. In her process, Sheil delves deep into her findings, transforming herself physically and emotionally in pursuit of understanding who it is she will be playing.

Billed as a hybrid documentary and psychological thriller, the film is at its most compelling when Sheil is leading her search for answers. Between the experts and former acquaintances of Chubbuck that Kate meets with, its hard not to be invested in this quest for answers. Though the audience is never given too much access into Sheil’s life beyond this process, in her performances as Chubbuck, Sheil makes an ideal audience surrogate, as she must employ her findings into her craft. And as her process brings her deeper into Chubbuck’s sense of depression and loneliness, the darkness she wrestles with deglamorizes her own notions of supposedly desirable “woman on the verge of a breakdown” roles that remain prevalent in film and TV. The film also provides an interesting discussion of suicide and mental health by having the actors cast alongside Sheil for the recreations offer their thoughts in interviews. Many of them understand the pain Chubbuck felt and relate to it, existing in a profession where rejection and physical insecurities are so prevalent.

The film does feel overlong, especially in the later half. Partially responsible are the scenes director Robert Greene has included of the actors recreating moments from Chubbuck’s life leading up to her suicide. While the decision to include these scenes are understandable, particularly as a means to have Sheil exhibit her discoveries, many of them pale in comparison to the audience’s imagined versions inspired by Sheil’s interviews and research. That said the recreation of Chubbuck’s death, which is teased throughout the film, offers a sure to be polarizing, but also deeply impactful conclusion to Sheil’s journey and her feelings towards Chubbuck’s actions. It’s in these moments the audience learns just how much a factor they’ve been in the story and are left to ponder the pain they’ve been complicit in.

Opens theatrically on August 24th.

-Nathan Braun