SANITY

Nothing spells Sunday to me better than waking up late and doing nothing. Earlier today, I woke up at 1 carrying with me 18 hours of sleep, officially baling me out of the state of sleeplessness I was in last week. And this Sunday, that nothing came in a form of a movie called Choke.

Choke (2008) is a film adaptation of director Clark Gregg from the book by Chuck Palahniuk bearing the same title. It’s about Victor, his loser life, and his genius plan of faking to choke in restaurants so wealthy people can go and save him. His so called “victims” then will feel that they have saved a person and in return continue to help him by sending him financial aid—money that he uses for his insane foster mother’s medical bills. The way he sees it, he sells senses of fulfillment to those who need it in a cheaper price. It’s like adopting a foreign baby he said, only that it is he that these people have adopted. 

Not a bad idea, selling feelings. Especially a worthy feeling at that.

The story is twisted, as other Palahniuk produced plots. His will depict introductory bombardment with realistically horrid details and individually build them up only to concoct them in a giant bomb that will timely explode just before the ending. His will give you confusion coated with contentment, and as much as this movie tuned down the plot’s mindfuckedness, I still was satisfied.

Fanboy-ing aside, let me give you my take of the film.

For the most part, the movie showed multiple clips of Victor’s modus operandi. That together with his narration of how badass he is because aside from a liar, he is also a Med school dropout turned medieval tour guide, a sexaholic who can’t feel for another person,and a total jerk resulting from an upbringing by his unconventional mother (Not to mention at one point he was convinced that he was a half-clone of Jesus.) Little did he know that the state which he is often in—choking—is a metaphor from the labels the world gives him. 

As  he was relieved from choking after he gave it a final attempt while in the interrogation room with 2 policemen, he drew a conclusion and let go of all labels attached to him.

“We’re not evil sinners or perfect knockoffs of God. We let the world tell us whether we’re saints or sex addicts, sane or insane, heroes or victims...we can decide for ourselves.”

 Epiphany.