Saturday Night At The Movies

Choke: Shades of Ashby

By Dennis Hartley

At the risk of sounding like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore, I’m going to go ahead now and sound like your sage Gramps, wistfully pining for the halcyon days of yore. There was a time, not too far removed, when the descriptive phrase “character study” was not necessarily the American film industry’s code for “box office poison.” Okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush. I’m talking about the 1970’s, when maverick directors like Hal Ashby, Robert Altman and Bob Rafelson made quirky, compelling “character studies” that audiences actually went out of their way to see. The protagonists were usually iconoclastic fringe dwellers or workaday antiheroes who, like the filmmakers themselves, questioned authority, flouted convention and were generally able to convey thoughts and feelings without CG enhancement. The films may not have always sported linear narrative or wrapped up with a “Hollywood ending”, but they nearly always left us a bit more enlightened about the human condition.

I’m not saying that the character study ever really went away; it just became increasingly more marginalized as the era of the Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut encroached. Indie films of more recent vintage like Buffalo 66, Jesus’ Son and SherryBaby are direct stylistic descendants of episodic 70s fare like Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Altman’s California Split, and Ashby’s The Last Detail, and prove that the genre is alive and well. The main difference between then and now, of course, is that when you venture out to the multiplex to seek such a film these days, you almost feel like donning dark glasses and a raincoat. When I went to a weekend matinee to catch Clark Gregg’s Choke, I counted exactly 4 other patrons in the postage stamp auditorium. It just made me feel so…dirty.

Choke is one of the most original comedy-dramas I have seen this year, undoubtedly due in no small part to the fact that Gregg’s screenplay is based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, whose previous book-to-screen adaptation was 1999’s Fight Club. Choke, similar to Fight Club, serves up a mélange of human foibles (addiction, perversion, madness and deception, to rattle off a few) and tops it all off with a dark comic sensibility. To put it another way, it’s a sort of a screwball romantic comedy for nihilists.

In his work life, Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is employed as a “historical re-enactor” in a theme park that replicates American colonial life. Victor’s personal life, as we soon come to learn, is more akin to some kind of a psycho-sexual Disneyland. In his off-hours, Victor regularly attends support group meetings for sex addicts, along with his pal/co-worker, the Portnoy-like Denny (Brad William Henke). Victor doesn’t appear to be making much headway toward recovery, as he customarily spends most of the session time furtively (and joylessly) humping fellow group member Nico (Paz de la Huerta) on the restroom tiles. The rest of his spare time is spent working a very specialized hustle. In order to help foot the private hospital bill for his ailing mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), he goes to restaurants and feigns choking fits. He carefully pre-selects his “saviors” based on the likelihood of them having wallets that are as big as their bleeding hearts.

Ida is suffering from dementia, and subsequently fails to recognize her son most of the time. During her rare moments of lucidity, Victor attempts in vain to learn more about his unknown father, a subject Ida has always been reticent to discuss in any detail. Through episodic flashbacks of Victor’s childhood, we glean that the somewhat free-spirited Ida has raised her son in, shall we say “a creative fashion” (in the interest of avoiding spoilers). One thing that does become clear is that, insomuch as Victor’s abilities to run a skillful con game go, it looks like the apple has not fallen very far from the family tree.

The plot thickens when Ida’s doctor, a pretty, enigmatic young woman named Paige (Kelly MacDonald) counters Victor’s inevitable horndogging attempts with an invitation to assist her with some medical “research”. Paige’s proposed method for propagating the stem cells for her experiment requires Victor’s um, interactive participation, and is medically unorthodox, to say the least. So is it love, or purely science? I can say no more.

Rockwell gives a nicely nuanced turn in the lead performance, and is well-supported by Henke and MacDonald. Anjelica Huston is excellent, as always. In a tangential sense, she is reprising the character she played in The Grifters. In fact, the dynamic of the mother-son relationship played out between Huston and Rockwell in Choke shares many similarities to the one she had with John Cusack’s character in the aforementioned film, particularly concerning some unresolved “abandonment issues” on the part of the son.

This marks the directorial debut for Gregg, who is probably most recognizable for his work as a TV actor (The New Adventures of Old Christina). Gregg casts himself as a self-important “lord high” role-player in the faux-colonial village where Victor and Denny work; it’s a small but very interesting part. Also look for the great Joel Grey (who we don’t see enough of these days) as a battle-scarred member of the sex addiction group.

This is not a popcorn movie. Challenging and thought-provoking, it does demand your full attention; and even though it offers a fair share of entertaining chuckles, it is not really designed to be taken lightly. There’s a hell of a lot of ideas packed into 90 minutes here, ranging from Oedipal conflict to Christ metaphor. There’s even a sense of twisted cinematic homage to Tom Jones when we are treated to the occasional fast-cut montage of bodice-ripping flashbacks depicting Victor, replete in leggings, waistcoat and tri-corner hat, having it off “on the job” with a few of his more comely fellow re-enactors.

Prepare yourself for a lot of sexual frankness, not visually graphic, necessarily, but still the uncompromising, in-your-face kind that makes a lot of people squirm in their seats. Warning: one scene that some may find very disturbing takes place between Victor and a woman he has met through the personal ads. She “enjoys” acting out rape fantasies. In the context of the narrative, it is not as sick as you may assume; it is actually an important and pivotal moment in the protagonist’s journey. This trip can be psychically brutal at times, but if you’re open-minded and willing to take the whole ride, it may blindside you with genuine warmth, humanity, and yes, even some redemption.

Mommy issues: The World According to Garp, Harold and Maude, The Loved One, Marty (1955), Mask, Psycho, Ed and His Dead Mother, Suddenly Last Summer, The Glass Menagerie, The Subject Was Roses, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), East of Eden, New York Stories, Crumb, Mother (1996), Next Stop Greenwich Village, Laurel Canyon, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 8 Mile, Elvis (1979), Nixon, Alexander, Oedipus Rex (1957), The Lion in Winter, Titus, Hamlet (1996), Life of Brian, Blue Velvet, Throw Momma from the Train, Strangers on a Train, White Heat, The Krays, Bloody Mama, No Way to Treat a Lady, Breakfast on Pluto, Forrest Gump, Ordinary People, Spanking the Monkey, Luna (1979), What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Where’s Poppa?

Previous posts with related themes: The Hoax/Color Me Kubrick

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