If you know who Christine Chubbuck was, the prospect of watching an entire movie about her may fill you with dread. A Florida TV news reporter, Chubbuck killed herself during a live broadcast in 1974. She was 29. She had a history of depression, and the head of her TV station blamed her suicide on the fact that she was almost 30 and unmarried.
This is not the explanation given in Christine, which, in less careful hands, might have been a sexist, lifeless march toward death. Instead, Rebecca Hall delivers a humane, improbably funny performance as a highly competent woman trying to survive depression within a boys’ club where “if it bleeds, it leads” is the MO, and where her work—as a skilled interviewer who covers less sensational local news—is devalued.