"Even the worst blowjob is better than smelling the greatest rose or
watching the greatest sunset."
Choke is a film based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of
Fight Club. Some of the Fight Club cultists found this film disappointing.
Their negative reactions are astounding. People argued that it was too
frothy and romantic. Mind you, this is a book that ridicules just about
anything people hold dear or sacred: religion, personal development,
childhood trauma, recovery from addiction, and love.
And people found it too warm.
Man, those Chuck Palahniuk fans are hard to please.
It's a story about ... well, it's complicated. Our hero has some
psychological problems brought on by his odd childhood with a mom who is a
con-artist and not a little bit loony. He's a sex addict. He fakes choking
regularly so that he can get people to save him. He likes the outpouring
of love that his saviors lavish on him, and he also likes the money they
almost invariably contribute after he lays a sob story on them. Since he's
basically drifting through life aimlessly, his profession is not much of
a profession at all. He dresses up like an 18th century American colonist
at one of those historical re-enactment exhibits.
His life is further complicated by the fact that his mother is dying
and lapsing into senile dementia, but he remains a dutiful son, visiting
her regularly, and using all of the money from his choking scam to provide
her with proper care. The visits are challenging, to say the least, since
mom does not recognize him, so he has to play whatever role her current
delusions assign him. His mother's mental fog is especially frustrating
since he would like her to regain clarity long enough to tell him who his
father is. He finds out that she has written a diary, but it's in Italian,
so he needs a translator - enter the love interest. The identity of his
father is a shocker. It's God. It seems that his Italian mother cloned him
from a sacred Catholic relic - the foreskin of Jesus. Since he is a clone,
in effect, he is Jesus. Or so it seems.
In addition to all that, there are numerous flashback scenes about his
childhood, there is a sub-plot about his roommate's burgeoning
relationship with a stripper, there are minor subplots within the colonial
re-enactment community, and there is a completely unnecessary encounter
with another sex addict who wants our man to fulfill her rape fantasy in
an extremely specific (and deflating) way.
That sounds like a lot to cover, doesn't it? It is. In fact, it's too
much.
I can see why the screenwriter was tempted to include all those
elements from the book, because it's all good stuff, and there are great
lines and memorable set-pieces within each scenario except the childhood
flashbacks. They needed to go away altogether. The childhood scenes were
an integral part of the book, which concludes with one of them, but in the
film they just seem like distractions from the story. Worse still, they
are boring, and Angelica Huston's "youth" make-up is neither flattering
nor convincing. But apart from those flashbacks, the material is all quite
amusing, and the actor Sam Rockwell sells it all beautifully.
Unfortunately, the resulting whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Anarchic, free-wheeling techniques which work beautifully on paper don't
always render well on celluloid, as you know if you're still waiting for a
great movie to come from the works of Joseph Heller or Kurt Vonnegut. A
film like this has only about 90 minutes to tell a story, involve us in
characters, deliver its emotional punch, make us laugh, and make some kind
of point. This particular film needs a tighter focus.
I enjoyed it anyway. Sure it's not Fight Club, but Rockwell and the
other actors have some great comic timing, the film is filled with
Palahniuk's zingers, and the character development can be poignant. I
didn't mind at all that the film added a small amount of redemption
towards the end. I don't really agree with the hardcore Fight Club fans
who wanted something darker. In my opinion a miniscule dash of hope made
the film a little more accessible than what might have resulted from a
literal interpretation of the book's ambiguous ending, and the
screenwriter didn't slather on hope like an Obama speech, which would have
been grating. A little dab of it seemed to work just fine.
In fact, I have to say that I liked the film quite a bit. It has its
flaws, but its virtues are greater. I was moved at times, and I laughed
out loud quite often. What the hell else does one need from a film?
