"Choke" (2008) - Movie Review

“Choke” goes on this arc of unnamed perspective on sex and its relation of human attachment. It at one instance deals it mechanically and clinically as a part of a daily process as a human would consume food and in another moment treats it as the barrier/enabler for a relation. So this oscillation from one end to the other considering it interrelated and departed does vibrate the necessary sound but a calm and sullen thirst is left unquenched at the end of it. Truth is that Clark Gregg’s directorial debut of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Choke” is a slapping treatment of this phenomenon of sex termed upon as the dirtiest, purest, perverted and pleasuring act of humans going on describing in their life terms. It may not suffice the pleasure of a fulfilled film experience but is originally directed in many ways.

Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is a sex addict, a very true one who breaks the sobriety in a flipping second to a fellow addict Nico (Paz de la Huerta) every time he goes for the addiction group session. His mother (Anjelica Houston) is suffering from Alzheimer’s and he takes care of her institution fees by working as a re-enactor of colonial times but his other source of income is to choke himself to death in a public restaurant. That brings in the constantly wondering people of their existence for goodness to extend their arms of being saviour. Victor seizes that need for approval to feed off them in terms of love and money.

Apart from the lookout for some one to have sex with Victor is in another compulsion as to find out his father or any roots of blood. He wants to see whether his problems are genetically inherited but more so to search for a regular person. In flashbacks we learn how he was made wanderlust by his mom. She has parental skills of a cat and that means placing her son in foster homes and snatching him away when she feels like it. But Victor has been loyal to her every inch of those crazy times because she never gives an opportunity for him to mingle in a society. The exact reasoning for her behaviour goes unexplained but that has made Victor into a stranger forever.

His only source of contact apart from his mother would be his fellow addict member Denny (Brad William Henke) a compulsive masturbator. Unlike Victor Denny tries to get out of this loop of doing something unwilling and of pure involuntary action from mind per se. He follows through the step and when he makes a break through Victor is unsettled because his friend is getting off the station to leave him alone. But it is even more hurting because Victor’s unfulfilled liking for his mom’s doctor Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald).

“Choke” meanders and gives us a feeling of being so without a purpose but it isn’t so. Within moments of the film, Gregg makes us completely comfortable with the explicit material because it is no more a passionate or labeled act of the characters, rather a usual occurrence in their life, only more so often. The problem with the film though is the meandering I was talking about. Whatever be the case, sex is truly culminated by the love for two people in romantic terms or a more so happening if not. The latter is emotionless and that happens a lot in the film. Despite being fine with it, we are drawn into the void of numbness Victor goes through. Whether it is the success of the film is not sure but it dries us up fast.

The characters are sad and live in this world of flesh and no pain. This carnal zeal while be a fantasy for many in reality is a painful endurance only that you do not feel the pain. The happening soon becomes the frustration driving to the edge as it does to Victor. But in the end, the film advocates something completely different. It does not offer solution but an acceptance. An acceptance of how one sees themselves and acts upon it. Not hunting for reasons but deal with the present. Victor learns it in a really hard way and I may add quite painfully.

Gregg’s direction is a good one in fact a better one. There is an unflinching display in approaching the subject for what it is and in Sam Rockwell, it is not creepy but disturbingly empathetic. He is not a complete crook but a man carrying a board saying he is a sex addict and in this world that is asking for character assassination. But people look at it as a different kind of honesty or it creates that plane of comfortable talking of a more tabooed human action. That is attracting attention which makes Victor’s addiction grow in leaps and bounds. But it sucks his inability to grasp his situation in coming out of it or more so accepting it. “Choke” is a strange film and its property might trigger thoughts but shut the doors for the film’s empathy.