Like thoracic surgery, you'll come for the blood and guts but stay because it has a lot of heart.

I took a roundabout way to get to _Christine_. I read the horror novella "Scanlines" (Todd Keisling, 2020), about what happens to teenagers who watch the original video of politician R. Budd Dwyer's on-air suicide during a news conference.

This lead me to the suicide of news presenter Christine Chubbuck, who shot herself in the head during a live television broadcast in 1974.

In 2016, _Christine_ was one of two films about the event that premiered at the Sundance film festival (the other being _Kate Plays Christine_).

My motivation for watching _Christine_ was probably voyeuristic, if I'm being totally honest. Unlike Dwyer's suicide (the actual video of the shooting closes out the shockumentary _Traces of Death_), the footage of Christine's event is buried deeper than the ark of the covenant in Indiana Jones, and will almost certainly never come to light.

So, I decided watching this film was the 'closest thing'. What I discovered, however, was the very human portrait of a fragile young woman who isolated herself and suffered from it, brought to life with aching realism by Rebecca Hall.

Those who want the juicy facts behind television's first live death will be disappointed, but those who want to hurt for another human they cannot console will find their hearts filled and broken at the same time.

(And the soundtrack is flawless for those of us addicted to the music of the 70s 🎶)