Berlin Film Review: Kate Plays Christine

Was that even a documentary? What even is a documentary? These are the kinds of questions I was asking myself as I walked out of Kate Plays Christine, which must be one of the most bizarre documentaries ever made. It starts Kate Lyn Sheil as herself as she prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbuck, a newscaster who famously shot herself on air – giving inspiration for the “mad as hell” speech in Sidney Lumet’s Network. However, Robert Greene seems to have more on his mind than merely analysing the relationship of the performer with the person she is performing, resulting in an highly unstable film that threatens to collapse into itself. This is not your standard, talking heads kind of documentary, instead taking Werner Herzog’s definition of “ecstatic truth” in making documentaries and playing it up to the nth degree. It may not make a lot of sense, but it sure will provoke a lot of conversation.

In the beginning, the film seems primarily interested in the ways a method acting approach to a role can lead to certain affects in the person performing. If you ever meet people who are into drama, they are usually not the stablest of people – by burying themselves into the roles of psychotics and depressives, it is sure going to rub off in them in some way. Kate takes her approach to Christine’s life very seriously – reading out of her diary, trying to get a fake tan like hers, buying the appropriate wig, and even getting red contact lenses.

Once you get to the ending – which is half what you expect, half something else entirely – it is hard to tell what is really Kate being herself, Kate playing Christine, and what is her putting on an act

The odd part is that, try as she might, she never really seems to disappear into the role of the woman she is playing. We are always made aware that this is not the “real” Christine, but merely an actress offering an interpretation of her. It’s as if Greene is making a film about the impossibility of really inhabiting another person. The fact Christine committed suicide on air makes her even more of an enigma – suicide being one of those acts that remain incomprehensible to most people. Once you get to the ending – which is half what you expect, half something else entirely – it is hard to tell what is really Kate being herself, Kate playing Christine, and what is her putting on an act, creating a hybrid documentary that feels like its in the process of deconstructing itself.

Image courtesy of Berlin Film Festival

In Kate Plays Christine, there are several instances in which the “traditional” fly-on-the-wall approach to documentary-making appears to have been supplanted in favour of a more aesthetic angle. When she goes into a gun shop, for example, at first it feels pretty authentic. She asks about Christine, who bought a gun from the previous store, and the shop owner gets cagey and says its not his responsibility what people do with guns. She leaves, but then returns as Christine, and from the way it is shot, how could the owner not know that that’s the same person wearing a wig, and that someone is still filming in there? It feels very strange.

Additionally, we see excerpts from the “film” which seem so poorly staged that it looks like a satire of 70s soaps. Is there supposed to be a supplementary film we can actually watch, or is Greene merely pulling our leg? I suspect he simply just isn’t interested in making documentaries in the conventional way, instead opting to make a reverie on the nature of documentaries, filmmaking and acting in an extremely metatextual form. Both perplexing and engaging in equal measure, it seems to invite further enquiry into the nature of its own making. Whether thats a success on his part, I really don’t know.

Director: Robert Greene

Cast: Kate Lyn Sheil, Stephanie Coatney, Michael Ray Davis, Zachary Gossel, Holland Hayes, David Mackey, Linda Roser, Mike Rubino, Marty Stonerock, Steve Zurk, Robert Greene.

Running Time: 112 minutes

Country: USA