Product Description

Jorge is a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher toiling away in a shabby diner in Queens, New York. From his solitary kitchen corner, Jorge quietly attempts to forge a bond with Amy, the newly hired Chinese waitress, but even though she tries to reciprocate, the gulf that separates them may be too large. On the job he is continually tormented by a coworker, and at home, in his Harlem apartment, under the psychological control of his domineering "roommate," he battles his inner demons. Choking Man captures the feeling of claustrophobia and almost literal asphyxiation newcomers to America experience as they struggle to find a place and purpose in this strange land.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102292 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-08-05
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .53" h x 5.50" w x 7.50" l, .25 pounds
• Running time: 84 minutes

Review
A drama blending fantasy and reality in its depiction of one man's inner demons. --Mike Goodridge, Screen Daily

Review
Choking Man escapes into a variety of alternate environments, from a hidey-hole behind a fence to an animated rabbit's sunshiny yellow milieu. Barron executes all the hard stuff remarkably well Barron's camera bestows the film's main Gotham locale with an almost mythical, microcosmic dimension. --Ronnie Scheib, Variety

About the Director
Writer/Director Steve Barron is a pioneer of the music video industry, getting his start directing such influential bands as The Jam, Human League, and Adam and the Ants. Eventually he would go on to direct some of the most popular and ground-breaking videos in history, including the award winning videos Billie Jean by Michael Jackson, Dire Straits Money for Nothing, and A-Has Take On Me. His feature length films include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Coneheads.

Customer Reviews

Confounded
I don't even think I could tell you my interpretation.

I could tell you my feelings are in play. At the end of the movie there is... for me... sadness. Something connected with this movie. I guess I am going to call it quits with trying to figure it out.

I'm in a teaching life, working with immigrants. There, in the differences in people, in the cultural exchanges,there are things I often don't get, catch. So this movie was like a lens on some aspect of the totality of my job as I conference, teach, interact on a yard, go in and out of work... of seeing glimpses, of wondering and knowing others minds only just as a little bit in a puzzle that has lost most of the pieces...and finding confusion a state of functioning reality. Oh let me start over. I just finished watching this movie. Choking Man is a wonderful title. It speaks to a actual event in the movie and alludes to the character you come to see as the enigmatic center and his life here. This is an impressionistic piece.

The movie told the story in a diner centered on interactions that never come completely to some linear clarity. And at the center is a painfully shy immigrant who slides in an out of what I assumed was schizophrenia, maybe induced by the stress of trying to integrate all of this pressure for survival, needs of a person his age for love, the shyness, the city, what he left. I just don't know.But my interpretation was he is struggling with his mind as alien as he is alien to this new world. It's so powerful in that regard that I find it a mesmerizing movie. I remained utterly lost in a maze much of the time.

Why I'm struggling is that I'm not entirely clear on this character. He was allowed to remain only partially revealed. And his thoughts and feelings are so visceral. Read the other reviews and the blurbs, watch, see where you are then. I want to reveal the ending to say something but I can't except to say he brought forward real people I've known. He was remarkably constructed.

So I'll tell you...I've recently had a complex dream, turned 50, been working on some thinking about teaching. I've worked almost exclusively in over 25 years with immigrant experience. This carries to me something of that. At a time when just bits, pieces, impressions, aren't adding up. It gets something of the closeness to physical, rough, sweat work of coming to our country.. It has the feeling, lighting, the sound of it...somehow in the shyness of this boy, his mind being revealed,he is glimpsed, but in how hard you are trying to read it from your experiences you realize something as I am doing of late, about how different things are perceived. It has a confusion, it has triggered for me the feeling of sadness I have in my work, profound remembrance of certain people, it seems to make me want to try...harder....to just cut myself a break....but to work aware. Watching. Hoping at least in moments we can see the suffering and walk in the shoes of one another. Try to reach out.

This isn't a film I can explain so I'm going to stop. I thought it was genius.
There aren't ten people I'd recommend it to, because I wouldn't trust it to too many. But to those you will understand and take from it how much each one of us is worth.
It was one I just felt. I really enjoyed the experience.

introverted immigrant
Jorge is a young and morbidly shy immigrant from Ecuador. By day he washes dishes at the Olympic diner in Queens, New York. At midnight he returns to his grimy apartment and a weird roommate. Jorge pulls his hooded sweatshirt over his forehead so that we barely see his face; he knows a little English but almost never speaks. At work an obnoxious cook named Jerry bullies and hectors him. But there is one bright spot for Jorge -- Amy, a bubbly waitress from China. She defends Jorge, but also enjoys flirting with Jerry. That's unfortunte, because Jorge had been enjoying her attention, shining his shoes, getting a haircut, and even buying her a gift. The isolation of Jorge's immigrant experience, and the dysfunction at his job, are exacerbated by his pathological introversion so that he is, in an emotional sense, choking. Even the church and Christian faith, which is repeatedly invoked, can't help him. The film ends with two surprise twists in the plot. Mainly in English; some Spanish with subtitles.

I Could Easily Detest This Film....
... for its inefficiency and obscurity, and above all for its blatant Symbolism!, particularly the recurring "rabbit with one long ear" that seems to obsess the director/scriptwriter Steve Barron more plausibly than his central character Jorge. I could loathe this film for its unexplicated imputation of homosexual abuse in the relationship of Jorge to his shadowy roommate. I could spurn the intrusive graphics - doodles, cartoons, slick swirls of color emerging from food scraps - that seem to intend to reveal Jorge's subconscious perceptions but have no imaginable pertinence to his cultural mentality. Are there even jackrabbits in Ecuador? In short, I could hate this flick...

...but I don't! In fact, I found it riveting. Memorable. Unlike most American films these days, which I forget so quickly that I go blank if I try to review them. Why? First, the acting. Three unknowns play the leads, the psychotically shy dishwasher Jorge, the ebullient Chinese waitress Amy, and the cocky Italian kid who torments Jorge and hits on Amy. I'll leave them nameless. I hope they never become recognizable nameplated stars. Their acting talents are too fine to be wasted on stardom. They inhabit their identities in this plotless non-drama as persuasively as people whose lives one glimpses on a bus or in a queue. Second, the sound track: subtle, masterfully unobtrusive, tightly synched to the characters' moods. Composer Nico Muhly deserves to be named; may he often be employed in place of the usual Hollowwood hacks! Third, the cameraman, Antoine Vivas Denisov; his "independent" cinematography is quintessentially raw and akilter, and may it ever be so!

Fourth, and most important: it's creative. It's different. It's ambitious. What a joy it is to see a filmmaker taking chances, breaking modes, in this era of hyped banality!

I have no urge to explicate this film. Previous reviewers - Ms. Sound and Mr. Cousins especially - have offered insights enough. This production is being distributed by an entity called FILMMOVEMENT, which is dedicated to generating an audience for independent and experimental filmmakers. They have a DVD-of-the-month club. I'm thinking of joining.