Christine Didn't Make It

This is Christine Chubbuck coming to you live from WZRB in Sarasota, back to you George.

I don't usually take a somber tone, I mean 99% of what I say and write is sarcasm. But I watched a movie recently that really affected me, and I've seen quite a few of those. Contemporarily speaking, this was perhaps the most overlooked film of this past year. It's called Christine starring Rebecca Hall as the titular character of Christine Chubbuck who is famous for shooting herself on air at the network where she worked. Rebecca Hall could very well be the most underrated actress of our time. People kind of lost interest in her after she was upstaged by Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Christina, Barcelona. 

It's one of those films that makes you immediately go on Wikipedia because you think to yourself that no way is this based on a true story, but it is. The tragedy of Christine is very much steered by the patriarchy that is constantly in her way. The film is meditative and a strong character piece and if you don't know what happens in the climax it can seem to drag, and yet Hall carries it so brilliantly. 

Christine is a co-anchor at some local station in Sarasota, Florida…jealous? And she's interested in positive human interest stories, alas her boss doesn't give a shit because it doesn't sell. One could say that it's the female Nightcrawler but the opposite of that. She doesn't want to sensationalize the news, in fact she calls it exploitative.

'Jesus Christ, just make your stories juicy!'

What's truly tragic is that she is optimistic to the very end. In the opening scene (this film takes place in the 70's btw) she imagines she's interviewing Richard Nixon, knowing she'll never even get close. We learn throughout the film that she lives with her mother, and about to hit 30, is still a virgin. She hates pot smoking, which her mother regularly engages in, and has a general disdain for the shall we say 'free love' of the times. She is so determined to not be famous per se, but to succeed in the job that she so much loves to do; a job dominated by male culture. She even volunteers at a children's hospital and is desperate for human connection. The lead anchor she frequently works with is the handsome George played my Michael C. Hall, whom she is desperately in love with, but because of her awkward workaholic demeanor, she doesn't really have a chance until he invites her out to dinner only to tell her that despite her hard work and cooperation with the whole 'if it bleeds it leads' attitude the station has taken on, that George has been promoted to anchor in Baltimore in a top 20 market over her. What makes it worse is that he was able to choose someone to take with him and surprise surprise it's not her. Things are made worse when she find out that she a cyst on her ovary and the entire thing has to come out. 

The fake flowers that symbolize a lot more than you think. 

Over time, Christine realizes that everything is working against her. We don't really get a sense that she's suicidal but we get clues that she has some mental issues that are only exasperated by her circumstances. 

Aside from Hall, it's the direction of the movie that is truly special. The camera follows her into an abyss surrounded by 70's glamour. There is a brilliant scene where she's clearly distracted in an interview on air by the fake flowers on her desk. She abruptly stops the interview and throws the flowers at the camera operator saying that it's all she can think about right now. 

I suppose there's a tenacious stubbornness to her that a lot of us, especially women can relate to. She works in a highly sexist environment where her abstaining from drinking and partying is looked upon as weird and she herself is looked upon as aloof. The amount of time she spends working shows how passionate she is, but left and right she is shut down even when she is cooperative. Her boss has nothing but disdain for her, and they are at odds almost constantly.

The way the film is directed, we can see that not only is Christine at the end of her rope towards the climax, but she sees no other way out. We don't see the gun, not really. We see it in her bag, but we don't see her staring at it contemplating what she's about to do, which is the lazy way out. 

Her final and only revenge is to put on a very false and somewhat creepy facade by going to her boss' office and asking to be lead on the following Monday about the weekend news. She promises that it will be sensational, and in the most prophetic and unforgettable way, through the strangest smile she tells him; 'I'm agreeing with you'.

The real Christine Chubbuck

I've already told you what ends up happening to Christine, and sometimes when you're not quite ready for that moment even though you know that it's coming, you need to see it again. But I couldn't watch this again. It was directed so viscerally that I literally jumped …off of the exercise equipment I was on, but give me a break. 

Back to Hall, I really thought she'd be at least nominated, but the film was small, the film was dark, and if anyone should have won, it should have been Natalie Portman for her haunting portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, but Hall needs to be acknowledged not only for the aesthetics of Christine; the walking style, the hair, the mannerisms, etc. But it was one in a few times where an actor inhabits a character so intimately that it really bothers you. You want so much to know what's going on inside Christine's head and her descent into making the decision that she finally does, and yet you don't want to know; that's great acting. Hall did Christine Chubbuck justice in a subdued, understated performance of a woman who is pushed into a corner by her male colleagues and no matter how hard she fights and how much she compromises, she feels that she's left with no choice and no other way out. And there's a strangeness in that part of you that actually does understand that.

Trailer below, streaming on Netflix, highly recommended.

Is Emma Watson's Character in The Bling Ring the New Suzanne Stone?

Emma Stone (left) portrays ring leader Alexis Neiers (right) in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring (2013)

So much has gone down in the past few days people. Wendy Davis stood in hot pink sneakers in a sea of Republican Texans without pee-breaks or trips to the vending machine for 13 hours to run out the clock so that most abortion clinics in the greater Texas area wouldn't be shut down. The supreme court overturned Prop 8 in California as well as ruled DOMA unconstitutional (while also overturning the Voting Acts Right) that last part being something people have totally seemed to ignore, but still huge strides made for freedom of sexuality and freedom of individual liberty. Meanwhile, Paula Deen is still a huge racist, and Kim Kardashian had Kanye's baby way too early, but not like dangerously early, and gave it literally the dumbest celebrity name, which is totally expected. So my brain is going through a lot of duress right now.

So let's talk about other stuff...all this news is overwhelming and I need a break. I've been watching previews for The Bling Ring (2013) and pre-ordered it on iTunes. It will be the first Sofia Coppola experience I had since I nearly shot myself after watching Marie Antoinette (2005) so obviously I'm hesitant. I've made sure I have a watching partner and the house is cleared of all poisonous and sharp objects. So I should be fine, but let's draw some kind of comparison, just for the fuck of it.

In the trailer there's a very interesting moment that I kept thinking of. Emma Watson plays the Alexis Neiers-based character we all know as the ring leader behind the infamous Hollywood Hills burglaries which shocked...absolutely no one and why the fuck did anyone care that Paris Hilton was now missing three pairs of Chanel sunglasses? I do believe there are still children starving in Sudan but whatever you want to make a film about Sofia is fine by me. Then it hit me, Sofia has always been somewhat of a failed satirist, and perhaps this will be her redemption.

both women love to watch themselves.

I couldn't stop thinking about another pitch perfect satire about a woman who strives to be famous by being infamous, clawing her way up a ladder and leaving others hurt and disturbed along the way; Suzanne Stone the ruthless murderess of Gus Van Sant's brilliant black comedy To Die For (1995). The character is played perfectly by a pre-botoxed Nicole Kidman, and there's a great scene when she's about to basically get away with concpiracy to commit murder and says to hoareds of press who surround her (just what she wants) that 'life, liberty....and all the rest of it still stand for something'. For some reason this immediately popped into my head when in the trailer we see Emma Watson as Nicki swarmed by a similar hoard of photographers desperately speaking into every microphone hiding her actual pleasure with the whole situation by huge Nicole Ritchie-type sunglasses that she's 'a huge believer in karma, and this is a learning experience for her' after which she takes a pause to think of something at least remotely sincere and ends it with 'I want to lead a country one day...for all I know'. The statement seems as misguided as Stone's but harkens that though acquitted in the actual courts, in the court of public opinion, these two broads are screwed because they wanted superficial things (namely fame of any sort, no matter how long the 15 minutes would last) and did really despicable and cruel things to achieve it, not understanding in the end that in their moment of redemption at least to the people that they had fought so hard to get on their side, they totally screwed it up because all in all, they are pretty soulless individuals. 

Both are extremely aware of their own sexual power.

Now, I am not comparing Gus Ban Sant to Sofia Coppola, I mean I haven't seen any pigs fly through my window, nor any of the horesmen of the apocalypse so that will not happen not now and not ever. But in terms of satire, I think if Sofia was directing Watson towards any extension of Alexis Neiers it was probably to play her as one of the greatest bitches in film history, or at least of the 90's and that of satire itself, and that is Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman). That is, if she's any kind of smart, and that's a reach. But let's hope that we see some more of Van Sant's themes in Coppola's teenage epic. It could work to her benefit, or land her right on her ass. Just like the rest of her films.

Trailers for both films below. 

Another Von Trier Sex Film? Um...I Guess.

Still from Nymphomaniac (2013)

Gratuitous and relentless painful sex is as likely to appear in a Lars Von Trier film as much as bare-knuckle boxing matches are likely to appear in a Guy Ritchie film, so brace yourself children for Nymphomaniac (2013).

Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg (who’s been in the two prior Von Trier films; Melancholia (2013) and AntiChrist (2009)) a dying self-proclaimed nympho retells of all his sexual experiences to anyone who would listen, but for the love of god why would they? I mean if Von Trier is involved I imagine every story has something to do with just a lot of blood and tears. Has sex in any Von Trier film ever been enjoyable or arousing to watch? It’s been torture, and not in the good way, but I think that is a creation of Von Trier unto itself. The displeasure of sex.

Hate to say it but it sounds very Breaking the Waves (1996) don’t it? Remember his first English language film? The one that was actually good and not polarizing? The one that was not art for art’s sake? The one before he made the incendiary statement that he sympathizes with Hitler?

Innocent small-town girl Emily Watson plays against Skarsgård (a man who's appetite for sex knows no bounds) and eventually leads to her demise.

Anyway, Breaking the Waves (1996) was a beautiful film starring Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård, who is in this one too apparently. It involves some kind of rig worker (Skarsgård,) who gets injured on a barge (or something I can’t remember) and becomes paralyzed form the neck down. He then forces his wife Watson using survivor’s guilt on her sorry ass to have sexual encounters with other men and then tell him all about it so that he can thereby vicariously experience them himself because his peen is more or less in the vault at that point.

So basically, this is not a film about sex, it’s a film about the stories we tell each other about all the sex we’ve had or hope to have, so kind of like a Danish existential bizarre-as-shit slumber party. I for one still haven’t forgiven Von Trier for his completely irresponsible comments at Cannes, but again looking at it from a filmmaking perspective, I have a love-hate relationship with him. His earlier Danish films don’t interest me much, and I never liked them. Then, he had a winning streak with Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), and Dogville (2003) (which he appropriately titled his ‘Death trilogy’) how Ingmar Bergman of you, Trier. But Antichrist (2009) is a film I flat out blocked out of my brain it was so profoundly idiotic. And Manderlay (2005)…let’s be honest, no one gave a shit about, or watched as far as I remember. 

Von Trier on the set of Melancholia (2011) with co-stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg

Melancholia (2011) on the other hand was a revelation, it took me a couple of times (and a couple of friends, you know your names) to finally convince me that this was a great work of art, so based on his history, I’m going to say that I have faith in the project, but am expecting a widely mixed if not totally polarizing reaction from every festival it travels to this year (except Cannes considering he’s a persona non grata there and we all know why), but that’s exactly what he wants. No publicity is bad publicity is it Trier? Unless of course you’re defending Hitler. 

 Below some trailers.

Women's History Month in the Recent Media

Happy month of empowerment, fellow ladies and warrior goddesses. But before you go reciting a vagina monologue and doing a sister circle, I'm going to go ahead and put up the stankiest contradictions to everything that any suffrage or liberation front fought to let us have. 

A really great example on TV these days of that classic second-wave feminist idealism and ambition is the character of Leslie Barbara Knope on Parks & Recreation, played incomparably by Amy Poehler. She's basically a younger version of Hilary Clinton who's determination and all-consuming hard work at a largely thankless and at times contradictory job as deputy director of a small-town Parks department. What's great about her character is that it doesn't shy away from the vulnerability aspect of a single woman in a man's world, and her penchant for waffles and white wine. 

In the media, particularly in television, for every show like Parks and Recreation (2009 - ), which parody's and satirizes the idea of female empowerment, we have a show like the Real Housewives of... (2006 - ) where they actually call themselves 'evolved and intelligent' when the opposite is clearly true, but it's not even funny at that point, it's just so sad. Let's condense the history really quick. First, we got the vote, then we got equal pay, and then women got to be secretaries of state, but running along side all of those trailblazers were the following lovely, classy, and most lady-like members of the gentler sex that seem to keep us perpetually in second place. Enjoy your free drinks!

Basically what I'm saying is that for every Leslie Knope, there's 10 Taylor Armstrong's. The media is not the best example of woman's fight for equality, particularly reality television. And while public figures like Gabrielle Giffords, Nancy Pelosi, and Michelle Obama are making tremendous strides forwards, pretty girls with big boobs have television ratings to fish for and still ascertain most of our attention.

Below please find a very taught satirization of women's progress by SNL legend and huge female presence in said institution who broke down barriers for the likes of Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, and Maya Rudolph, Cheri Oteri. This is when Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton sex scandal was the major diet in the newspapers. It's actually frightening how foretelling it is considering we now have to deal with people like Dana on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and her 25,000$ sunglasses or Snooki on Jersey Shore, or all of the whiney bitches on Grey's Anatomy, who are all proving that the glory days of strong self-sufficient, ambitious, and independent women is a dream forgotten, and no Beyonce and Sofia Vergara don't count.