Christine

A film about the last months of a real person. Christine Chubbuck is a reporter at a local television station in Florida. She takes the work seriously; she wants to make pieces about social issues, and what interests her is not what the station wants. There is a new approach at the station. The owner wants ratings and gives the news director a plain instruction: if there is blood, lead with it. Christine does not want to work that way. She also wants to move up, and the two wishes cut across each other. In her private life she is alone. She lives with her mother, cannot make friends, and cannot say anything about her interest in the anchor at work. There is a medical matter too; a possible operation and the risk of not being able to have children. The film tells all of this not as large events but inside the daily rhythm of the work: the edit room, meetings, a tape that fails, the pressure of the clock. What the ending is, is known; it happened in 1974 and what went out on television that day was discussed in America for a long time. The film chooses to tell the time up to that point and does not try to explain the reason. Rebecca Hall plays Christine. Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Maria Dizzia are in the cast. Antonio Campos directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet dramas built on detail and following a single character. Who it is not for: anyone the subject would weigh on; the narrative shows depression and loneliness directly.