Netflix picks: I saw this movie, Choke

Now, I'm not entirely sure how I missed the theatrical release of this picture--but I'm guessing it has something to do with my not actually being all that much interested in a Chuck Palahniuk cinematic adaptation that I was actually on the look-out for it.

Not that I did not like Fight Club. Oh shit. Fight Club kind of proved that Palahniuk's novels could sometimes be filmable and even get some popularity--but that was with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, so, like how is that happening again? Also, Fight Club was kind of linear in narrative. Doable. (I wonder if anyone out there is trying a treatment of Rant? I would fully endorse seeing that cinematically--it's already written in documentary style--that would be potentially visually interesting, a director's wet dream, and quite mad to persue, which makes it all that much more a movie I'd kind of like to see.) But I picked up a copy of Choke, the novel, and noted the blurb "Now a Major Motion Picture".

Well shoot. I had to put it in my Netflix queue. And due to the temporary "Long Wait" promised by the Wonder Woman DVD I was interested in, I saw this one this week.



Now, I'm going to say I liked this movie. In fact, I actually think the movie presented a story a bit better than the novel did. I know, heresy. But in the process of simplifying the themes and twists into a coherent whole, the movie succeeds in losing some things that kind of made the novel work--as a novel, that were just ineffective for a film.

Such as--first person narrative. Oh, there's a little, but we aren't subjected to the narrator's constant inner voice of doubt and self-recrimination and guilt. This really does let us like the protagonist, Victor Mancini, a bit more, because, as Palahniuk portrays him in the novel, he is a self-admitted awful person. Sure, he still does really dumb stuff in the movie. But we don't have to have him telegraphing it "HEY, I'M MAKING A BAD CHOICE NOW--I AM DYSFUNCTIONAL THAT WAY!" We can just see him react (Rockwell's tired, beleagured, "Everyman" take on it has a kind of rumpled charm that is I think a little more endearing than the Victor Mancini of the book). Denny (Brad William Henke) seems less dumb without Victor's judgement. The sex scenes are appropriately comical between Victor and his sex-addicts' group friends. The love interest, Paige Marshall, seems less weird, and her movie-version back-story is more accessible than the novel version.

Also, for the sake of the movie--the ending is simplified a bit. It's definitely less apocalyptically "Ohmigod, all my shit is is laid out and I'm a total loser"--oh no. Redemption is more plausible.

Oh, bonus bit: Angelica Huston plays Victor's crazy Mama. Which, if you've read the book, but haven't seen the movie--I got to tell you, she is Ida Mancini.



She really breaks down the crazy, ball-busting, unhelpful, strange woman who influenced Victor's life. My husband, who watched the movie with me, but didn't read the book, said he thought the movie could've been longer just to treat more of their odd relationship. I agree.

Anyway--it was a good one; a nice Netflix find.