Critic Reviews

As an exploration of identity as it is felt, projected, and interpreted, this is masterful.

It movingly posits acting as a metaphor for the search for connection, through visceral texture rather than platitude.

The new movie by Robert Greene is a tour de force in the blending and bending of genres.

Sheil is an ideal vessel for the film's inquisitive style.

There's a tangible sensitivity to Kate Plays Christine that is constantly present as the project explores two personas and a gamut of topics (gender politics, gun control, and depression among them).

A fascinating process movie about acting and storytelling, but also a curious meta-contemplation of our own voyeuristic attraction to tragedy.

The process of transformation is the story, and the story truly belongs to the artist.

Greene makes it clear early on that his interests lie less with a news report than with what Werner Herzog dubbed “ecstatic truth”. The dial swerves between “catching something” to “clearly rehearsed” and back again, and all to the betterment of the final project.

Greene encourages our curiosity (and even a hint of caution) about documentary perspectives and techniques that other films prefer viewers to take as given.

I would simultaneously argue that Sheil and Greene go off the rails several times during Kate Plays Christine, most notably in their overly artful and self-conscious attempt to re-enact the shooting but also that they get viewers closer to the real Christine Chubbuck than I would have thought possible.