Choke

Basically, anything Chuck Palahniuk does is given higher regard, in that: if it looked terrible I may not watch it. But if it looks terrible and he's attached, then I'll watch it. But to be honest, this project is worth watching without Chuck being involved. Perhaps the most attention-grabbing aspect of this film is that it features not only Sam Rockwell, but Community's Brita, in all her glory. Take that how you will.

When you sit down and watch an adaptation of Chuck's work, you know you're into something else. Fight Club was odd, beautiful and mind-bending. But it barely scratched the surface of how wretched, twisted and perverse his other material can be. And I can say this safely because from just reading one other book of his, a collection of tied together short stories in Haunted. They are also incredibly fascinating.

The first thing that you notice in the movie is the use of support groups and how they take full focus. Again, you get a bit of it in Fight Club as it serves as a catalyst for the unnamed narrator. Every character in this movie is so severely broken, but you can't feel bad for them. They are pretty vile. The movie starts out with some nasty storytelling, as we go around the circle of a sex addiction support group. And that's where you really see some of Chuck's more shocking pieces come out, but over the course of the movie it gets watered down. I can't help but think about the process involved here as the director adapts the novel for the screen, and slowly ventures away from the source material. And now I have to read the story to see what really happens.

It's not necessarily a bad thing though. Chuck even said about Fight Club that he thought it was an improvement upon his own material, but in that case he left the book in the hands of a visionary (re: David Fincher). There was certainly some narrative here but nothing that really popped off the screen. As I mentioned the characters are despicable, and it's really about reform. Rockwell's protagonist is a sex addict who spends most of time goofing off at work and visiting his mother in a nursing home. Through a series of flashbacks to Victor's childhood we get a broader portrait of how he came to be how he is today. He involves himself with people who seem to care, and he starts to care for someone too. This seems to be the primary focus; he distances himself from a friend who seems to be getting better (from his own addiction) due to jealousy, I'm sure. The same thing is happening to him too, but he fights it hard and lives in denial. But as this denial gets in the way of his own addiction, he's forced to come to terms with his situation.

This coming to terms is represented by Step Four of the addiction counselling. This is where I think the movie is partly aimed at people who have at least some familiarity with this stuff, and I have to say I have no way to relate to this stuff at all. I don't know anybody who has gone through any kind of steps-based program, so I have no idea what Step Four could possibly be. Perhaps it doesn't matter: it's clearly a major stepping stone towards rehabilitation, and a turning point for our main character. I'm not sure I enjoyed the movie, but I can appreciate it. I felt dirty afterwards, as well you should after watching or reading any of these insights into Chuck's dirty worlds.