Choke has been a work that I had hoped might be translated to film one day. I still hope one day it can be.
This 90-minute piece, adpated from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk of, of course, Fight Club fame, tells the tale of Vincent Mancini. This is a man not happy in life. Having lived a childhood under the guidance of his mother, Ida - a self-created civil disobedient- and on the run from the State Welfare groups, he had a chance to settle into a normal life, even entering medical school. That is, until Ida's dementia started to turn from eccentricity to clinical impairment. To keep her out of state institutions, Vincent had to start working. And this is when his life started to go to shit.
To support his mother, he got a job - one he hates, as a member of the local Colonial Town, one like those many of us have been dragged to (old-time blacksmith, baker, glass-blower, etc.). But it's not enough to make ends meet. And so, he's discovered a 2nd source.
As Vincent (played very capably by Sam Rockwell) recounts, when someone saves your life, they're grateful to you. They feel responsible to you. They have birthed you into the world again, and you have saved them the same way that they have saved you. They will never forget that moment, and they will never forget you. Should you, in the future, need them again, they will be there for you.
Say, if you need $100 for a root canal. Or $50 to see your dying uncle.
This is Vincent's cottage industry. Go to a nice restaurant, get the juiciest steak on the menu. Enjoy most of your meal. Then, choke on it. Aim your choking body at the nearest well-to-do target, and let yourself be reborn.
Of course, though he sees it as a necessity, is really Vincent's hobby. And it isn't a pleasant one. So, to feel something else, he abuses himself. He goes to Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings, deserving to be there but really there to similarly find an easy release.
Add a fun cast of characters - best friend Denny (masturbation addict/art school dropout); Nico (sex addict/FWB of Vincent); Cherry Daquiri/Beth ("innocent" stripper/Denny's new love); and Dr. Paige Marshall (played by Kelly Macdonald - more later), the new doctor for Ida (aptly played by the modern-day matriarch for every dysfunctional man-boy, Anjelica Huston). And don't forget the sex addicts with their entertaining stories, the fellow colonial villagers (including the golden girl Ursula who would normally never give Vincent the time of day but won't ignore him either), the staff at the mental hospital (each of whom Vincent apparently knows biblically), and the crazy fellow "inmates" at the mental facility, each of whom have altered their memories and delusions to turn our friend Vincent into their molester/rapist/thief/dog-killer/you-name-it.
OK, this is all well and done. That's the first 10 minutes. What's next?
So, as Ida delves deeper into her delusions, she mentions to Vincent (though she thinks he's one of her dead lawyers, Fred) that she must tell Vincent the truth, the truth about "where he comes from." Wait, he's not the son of a traveling salesman from Oslo? No, the truth lies in Ida's diary - which happen to be in Italian.
But wait - Dr. Marshall can read Italian. What does she find? It seems Ida wrote that she underwent a radical impregnation/insemination, using a holy relic as the source. Yes, it seems Ida "writes" she was inseminated with DNA from Jesus' foreskin (don't blame me - I didn't write it).
Take one man with a dubious and unhappy life, add a dying mother - as unhealthy an addiction as anything else in his life - and a potential God-father complex. This should be a fun story, right? (Oh yeah, Dr. Paige also offers to use embryonic stem cells to help his mother, only she needs to make the embryonic tissue herself, with Vincent's seed - while they produce the tissue in the mental institute's chapel).
As John correctly stated, I have read Choke. I am a Chuckophile; I have each of his works of fiction in paperback or first edition hardback. And in general, his fiction falls into 2 groups:
1) Horror/mystical works with enough mystery that never fully gives over to the fantastic but hints at it (Diary, Haunted).
2) Stories of people taken to an extreme by their neuroses and circumstances; Fight Club and Invisible Monsters (probably my 2 favorite works) are the most extreme of these, while Choke is the most grounded.
Palahniuk certainly fits a genre of his own, best typified by the ability to combine an efficiency of language (most often in the 1st person) with a depth of character development that helps to normalize the fetishist, the neurotic, the megalomaniac. It is truly a gift that can define the masters of art - written, musical, and visual..
Regrettably, where Jim Uhls and David Fincher succeeded in Fight Club, Clark Gregg comes up short. Instead of focusing the film on the proper themes of the work (the need for feelings of release/relief; the addictions one uses and abuses in one's life; presumptions and beliefs we build around and fully believe because nothing says we shouldn't), Gregg fixates on:
1) Sex addiction
2) What a jackass Victor is.
Now, both are important, but neither really should define the movie. Even when taken as a work in and of itself and not comparing it to the novel, the movie falls a little flat. Its pacing is good to start, but so many important subtleties (Denny's rock "thing", the relationship with Paige, even Victor's martyrdom to the old ladies) are rushed past. An good example - after Paige tells him he might be the half-clone of Christ, Victor has a little panic attack. The old ladies come in and gleefully adore him. In his panic, he "attacks" them - he breaks one woman's walker, he pulls the pants down on another. With the right timing, this would have been a sad, desperate scene invoke pity for a pitiful man; instead, the people in the audience laughed at the screening I was in.
There are highlights. Rockwell, as I mentioned, fits this pitiful persona to a T. Huston, though she is starting to almost become the typecast mom, plays crazy (in 2 time settings) very nicely, without outrageousness but without banality. Macdonald, largely due to the writing for her, gives a rather curt performance (and her Scottish accent keeps trying to explode out of her) that does neither herself nor the role any benefit, though it does not insult either.
Most films have to be ambitious when written fresh for the screen. Adaptations attempt for more; adaptations of novels, of any size, are the most challenging. Did I enjoy the film? Yeah, at least the first half. Could it have been done better? Assuredly. Should you see it? If you want a 90-minute quickie flash across a sad life in a comedic sense (with a pleasant ending, mind you), sure. If you want something that will teach you about a lot of people in the world (including probably yourself), go buy the book.
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