There is some real controversy (among people who care about categories) about whether "Kate Plays Christine" is a documentary or not. It doesn't -seem- to be entirely scripted, and writer/director Robert Greene strenuously denies that it is merely scripted drama. But maybe it's in the same general category as "Survivor" or "The Bachelor", an "unscripted reality movie" or something.
The blurbs tell you that it's about actress Kate Lyn Sheil's preparation to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a Sarasota, FL journalist who took her own life on the air in 1974. Well, that's incomplete. I guess the following is a big SPOILER, possibly the biggest one: there is no other movie. This will save you some work if you are like me. Early on I paused the DVD and started checking up on what movie the other movie was that Kate was going to play that role in. There was a different movie in the same year about Chubbuck ("Christine"), but Sheil was not in it, was never going to be in it, and it turns out (so far as I know) that these were entirely independent and uncoordinated projects.
Greene was never going to direct, and Sheil was never going to act in, a feature-length biopic about Chubbuck, which explains why you never see the kind of organization behind her that you would need for such a film, and answers questions like "why is Kate going around Sarasota herself talking with old journalists and checking out the gun store? Didn't the author of the screenplay do this stuff?" No, the subject matter of the film is Kate trying to alter her appearance and reactions to get into the role of Chubbuck, but the sum total of the scripted scenes with Sheil playing the Chubbuck role, along with some local actors, comes to twenty minutes at most, and that was always Greene's plan. I guess maybe this is supposed to actually dawn on you in the course of the film, but if that's what Greene intended I think that's unnecessary mystification, and he could have spelled out his intentions ahead of time.
(By the way, this is one of the few cases in which I have actually troubled to go to the DVD features and play back parts of the film with the director's commentary before writing a review. Generally I think the movie should stand on its own without the viewer having to do additional digging. This is another reason why I think there should have been more transparency up front.)
If you approach this movie with the idea that you are going to learn the real story about Chubbuck and why she killed herself, this movie is going to disappoint you. One of the early takeaways is that very few people in Sarasota remember her at all. There is no more information about her and her motives than the snippets that mostly came out at the time. Was her suicide really mainly about her not having found love, or a protest against her employer's supposed "blood-and-guts"-oriented editorial practices, or was it "just" a product of clinical depression, or maybe some other mental disorder(s) or states, and not (mostly) "about" any real-world stuff at all? Would it really have not happened if this guy hadn't rejected her, or if the videotape machine hadn't jammed that morning? Obviously no such answers can be found.
More worthy of study, perhaps, is the question of anyone (notably Greene, as he is aware) devotes any time to depict or dramatize Chubbuck's suicide, much less persist in hunting for the videotape of the actual suicide, as some do. And what of us, the viewers of "Kate Plays Christine"? Are we better than consumers of "blood and guts" ourselves? It's not just me asking this question, by the way.
Kate's physical transformation into Christine seems unlikely at first, as the two women are pretty dissimilar physically, but as she acquires a wig and colored contacts and studies Christine's mannerisms it becomes surprisingly effective. But even more uncanny is Kate's work at adopting what seems to be Christine's personality. I was struck by a scene in which Kate angrily berates herself for supposedly screwing up a scene, echoing what we think we know about Christine's ragefulness and detestation of failure. (How spontaneous was that rant by Sheil? Was it at all scripted? I didn't play back Greene's commentary for that, so I don't know for certain.) (I am assuming Greene is reliable in his commentary, but this is a judgment.)
As the denouement approaches, Kate has obtained a revolver and has learned exactly where Christine put it to the base of her brain, but repeatedly says she doesn't think she can actually re-enact the shooting itself. The question of whether she can and will becomes invested with progressively more dramatic tension, and extends well beyond squeamishness or taste, well into the territory of morality: ought she to pull the trigger? What do we want her to do, and why? Ultimately Kate seems to be imbued with all of Christine's darkest emotions as she brings the film to a close. Greene assures us on the commentary track that this part of the film was not scripted, by him at any rate, and was Kate's own work, unexpected and unguided. As to whether the emotions she displays really have her in their grip, or whether she is deploying them in the service of the film, I could be convinced either way.
While the credits roll, Kate removes her Christine-makeup, briefly flashing a smile which prompts Greene to insist on the commentary track that "she's all right." There is no Kate Lyn Sheil commentary track to confirm this with.
The blurbs tell you that it's about actress Kate Lyn Sheil's preparation to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a Sarasota, FL journalist who took her own life on the air in 1974. Well, that's incomplete. I guess the following is a big SPOILER, possibly the biggest one: there is no other movie. This will save you some work if you are like me. Early on I paused the DVD and started checking up on what movie the other movie was that Kate was going to play that role in. There was a different movie in the same year about Chubbuck ("Christine"), but Sheil was not in it, was never going to be in it, and it turns out (so far as I know) that these were entirely independent and uncoordinated projects.
Greene was never going to direct, and Sheil was never going to act in, a feature-length biopic about Chubbuck, which explains why you never see the kind of organization behind her that you would need for such a film, and answers questions like "why is Kate going around Sarasota herself talking with old journalists and checking out the gun store? Didn't the author of the screenplay do this stuff?" No, the subject matter of the film is Kate trying to alter her appearance and reactions to get into the role of Chubbuck, but the sum total of the scripted scenes with Sheil playing the Chubbuck role, along with some local actors, comes to twenty minutes at most, and that was always Greene's plan. I guess maybe this is supposed to actually dawn on you in the course of the film, but if that's what Greene intended I think that's unnecessary mystification, and he could have spelled out his intentions ahead of time.
(By the way, this is one of the few cases in which I have actually troubled to go to the DVD features and play back parts of the film with the director's commentary before writing a review. Generally I think the movie should stand on its own without the viewer having to do additional digging. This is another reason why I think there should have been more transparency up front.)
If you approach this movie with the idea that you are going to learn the real story about Chubbuck and why she killed herself, this movie is going to disappoint you. One of the early takeaways is that very few people in Sarasota remember her at all. There is no more information about her and her motives than the snippets that mostly came out at the time. Was her suicide really mainly about her not having found love, or a protest against her employer's supposed "blood-and-guts"-oriented editorial practices, or was it "just" a product of clinical depression, or maybe some other mental disorder(s) or states, and not (mostly) "about" any real-world stuff at all? Would it really have not happened if this guy hadn't rejected her, or if the videotape machine hadn't jammed that morning? Obviously no such answers can be found.
More worthy of study, perhaps, is the question of anyone (notably Greene, as he is aware) devotes any time to depict or dramatize Chubbuck's suicide, much less persist in hunting for the videotape of the actual suicide, as some do. And what of us, the viewers of "Kate Plays Christine"? Are we better than consumers of "blood and guts" ourselves? It's not just me asking this question, by the way.
Kate's physical transformation into Christine seems unlikely at first, as the two women are pretty dissimilar physically, but as she acquires a wig and colored contacts and studies Christine's mannerisms it becomes surprisingly effective. But even more uncanny is Kate's work at adopting what seems to be Christine's personality. I was struck by a scene in which Kate angrily berates herself for supposedly screwing up a scene, echoing what we think we know about Christine's ragefulness and detestation of failure. (How spontaneous was that rant by Sheil? Was it at all scripted? I didn't play back Greene's commentary for that, so I don't know for certain.) (I am assuming Greene is reliable in his commentary, but this is a judgment.)
As the denouement approaches, Kate has obtained a revolver and has learned exactly where Christine put it to the base of her brain, but repeatedly says she doesn't think she can actually re-enact the shooting itself. The question of whether she can and will becomes invested with progressively more dramatic tension, and extends well beyond squeamishness or taste, well into the territory of morality: ought she to pull the trigger? What do we want her to do, and why? Ultimately Kate seems to be imbued with all of Christine's darkest emotions as she brings the film to a close. Greene assures us on the commentary track that this part of the film was not scripted, by him at any rate, and was Kate's own work, unexpected and unguided. As to whether the emotions she displays really have her in their grip, or whether she is deploying them in the service of the film, I could be convinced either way.
While the credits roll, Kate removes her Christine-makeup, briefly flashing a smile which prompts Greene to insist on the commentary track that "she's all right." There is no Kate Lyn Sheil commentary track to confirm this with.