Choke
Directed by: Clark Gregg
Written by: Clark Gregg, Chuck Palahniuk
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Brad William Henke, Kelly Macdonald

It was David Fincher’s gritty and controversial adaptation of Fight Club that catapulted author Chuck Palahniuk to fame back in 1999 and attracted a legion of followers to his books, but as he continued to write new material, his fans wondered why there weren’t more big screen adaptations on the way. Considering the success of Fight Club, you would think that a ton of studios would have been beating down his door — and they were, for a while. Both Survivor and Invisible Monsters had been optioned at one point, but then 9/11 happened and suddenly stories involving hijacked planes were no longer considered appropriate.

As it turns out, it has taken nine whole years to get another Palahniuk movie off the ground. Somehow first-time director Clark Gregg managed to wrangle the rights to Palahniuk’s fourth book, Choke, and brought it to life with only a fraction of the budget that David Fincher had to work with. How he managed to do it is beyond me, but it’s worth noting that Gregg is not exactly an unknown in Hollywood; he is an actor, familiar to many as Richard from the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, although he started this project way before he ever got that gig.

Let’s get one thing straight: Choke is no Fight Club. If you can accept that, it should be more than enough to satisfy fans of Palahniuk’s dark and depraved world. Whether or not it will appeal to the uninitiated is another story, but it’s a decent little indie flick that will probably find a bigger audience when it eventually gets released on DVD.

The book itself is not Palahniuk’s strongest, but it contains many of the elements that he has become known for: support groups, disturbing sex, and self-loathing characters participating in nihilistic behaviour. Victor Mancini is a twenty-something med school drop out who now pays the bills by posing in costume at a Colonial America historic site. He supplements his pay with a nasty little habit of pretending to choke in restaurants — he finds that by having people save him, they take pity on him and send him money. His mother is also suffering from Alzheimer’s and he visits her at a nursing home, even though she often doesn’t recognize him. Through flashbacks we learn about his rocky childhood, where his mother would often kidnap him from various foster parents over the years. Clearly he’s a little bit messed up, and to make matters worse, he is now also a sex addict. Yep, sounds like par for the course in a Chuck Palahniuk book, right?

Generally speaking, I think Gregg did a respectable job adapting this book for the screen. He managed to maintain a lot of the dark humour and certainly didn’t shy away from any potentially questionable content. In fact, Choke will almost certainly be unsettling for some and offensive to others (I think someone walked out of our theatre during the first sex scene in a chapel). Even if you’ve read the book and know what to expect, just seeing the images that go with the words can be a bit shocking. Nonetheless, this is part of what makes it a faithful adaptation.

The movie relies a lot on the actors to walk a very delicate line, and thankfully they are up to the task. Anjelica Huston, in particular, shines in her performance as Victor’s mother, and considering her dysfunctional maternal roles in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and The Royal Tenenbaums, she was clearly the right woman for the job. Sam Rockwell makes a great Victor Mancini, hinting at a troubled psyche, while also putting on a numb exterior. He does comedy well (although in some cases I thought maybe he was a little too goofy), and in a weird way, his physical resemblance to Chuck Palahniuk himself also added a sense of authenticity to the role. Both Brad William Henke and Kelly Macdonald were also quite good in their supporting roles, although the mother/son relationship is clearly the focus.

Where the movie fails to excel is in the cinematography and the storytelling departments. The movie looks bland as hell, and does absolutely nothing to enhance the proceedings with any sense of visual flair (kind of surprising considering that DP Tim Orr has worked on all of David Gordon Green’s films.) Perhaps this wouldn’t be as noticeable if we didn’t have Fight Club in the back of our minds, but either way there is nothing special about how it is presented. More importantly, the story feels a bit muddled, with some elements like Denny’s rock house getting barely any mention and potentially confusing non-readers. In some ways I think the movie functions better as a companion to the book rather than a standalone piece, which really is a strike against it.

Taken as strictly a dark comedy or satire, Choke works, but whether or not you get anything more from it depends on your view of Palahniuk. Some felt that Fight Club was meaningless drivel, while others thought it was a brilliant essay on the state of post-modern society. I tend to think Palahniuk has some intelligent things to say, but it’s hard to capture it on film without having his narrative voice run throughout the entire flick. Regardless, this is a competent albeit unremarkable Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, one that gets the job done, just not one you will feel the urge to revisit again immediately afterward. Here’s to hoping it will be enough to spark renewed interest in bringing a few more Palahniuk books to the screen in the near future. — Sean

SCORE: