Runtime:- 1 hour 54 minutes
Choked Cast:- Saiyami Kher, Roshan Mathew, Amruta Subhash, Upendra Limaye
Directed By:- Anurag Kashyap
Rating:- 3.5/5
You don’t really know the value of a possession until you possess it no more. The biggest possession of mankind is either in our wallets or locked away in a bank. Sometimes……. just sometimes….. it’s locked away in the abandoned flat on the top floor of a building and slowly seeps into drains, choking the pipes.
The suspense packed thriller ‘Choked’ is another Anurag Kashyap movie that executes brilliantly the working of a middle class family with financial struggles. January 1946 marks the debut of the concept of demonetization in India. A total 70 years later on the 8th of November in the year 2016, the country fell prey to this concept again, thus inspiring this movie now, four years later.
‘Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai’ was released on the OTT platform Netflix on 5th June, 2020. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and produced by Netflix and Good Bad Films, this movie marked the debut Hindi language film of Roshan Mathew with Saiyami Kher in the lead.
Getting on to the exciting part, the story line, this movie is a perfect sample of what people really went through amidst demonetization. It revolves around the Pillais, who have their own shares of ups and downs but refuse to settle things between each other causing a hysteria of problems.
Sarita Pillai (Saiyami Kher) is a working mother who happens to wear the pants in the relationship as her husband Sushant Pillai (Roshan Mathew) is an unemployed aspiring musician without life goals. They share a son, Sameer Pillai, who gets unknowingly tangled in fights between his parents. Sarita works as a cashier at the bank and she is shown to once have had a dream of becoming a singer but with each passing year, her fright of failure and household burdens do not allow her to pursue that thought.
Sushant is seen as a carefree and ‘give a damn’ character who isn’t bothered about any chores, his family and sadly even his debts. Sarita on the other hand not only is the bread earner but is also the subject of dependence of Sushant and Sameer.
One eventful night, as Sarita walks into her kitchen to quench her thirst, she hears the sound of her kitchen sink’s drain pipe clogging. Upon detaching the pipe, a couple of money bundles float to the surface and roll onto her kitchen floor. In shock, she tries waking Sushant but then decides on keeping this event a secret.
Meanwhile Sushant gets into a heated exchange with their downstairs neighbour Dinesh (Uday Nene) in the matter of finances.
Over time, a series of similar events cause strains in the main characters’ marriage that eventually leads to Sushant suspecting Sarita of cheating on him. In reality, Sarita was being harassed by a hotel owner Reddy (Upendra Limaye), whom Sushant was indebted to.
Sarita managed to capture multiple bundles of cash through her broken sink drain that increased suspicions in Sushant’s mind at the occurrence of the sudden abundant cash.
The couple’s another set of neighbours, a single mother Sharvari (Amruta Subhash) and her daughter are prepping everyone for the latter’s wedding where Sarita gifts them a food blender worth more money that they would’ve been able to afford under normal circumstances. Sushant being curious as to what the gift could be, sneakily peaks into the gift wrap and finds himself shocked at the discovery of the price.
One fine…. or should I say unfortunate day, Sarita reaches the bank only to get cornered by Reddy, who insisted on getting his money back. She was saved by Sushant who had snooped into her phone and followed her to work noticing something was off. The same day the bank which was already in chaos over the deadline was robbed by a mob of masked gangsters while Sarita was working. In a poor attempt to save her purse that contained all the notes she accumulated from the drain pipe, she was knocked unconscious by one of the goons.
Post a few days, a group of officials from the tax department show up at their door asking about the stolen money. Sushant smartly directs them to a room upstairs that belonged to a shady MLA’s private assistant, a man named Rajendra. Upon reaching that room Sushant informs the officers that Rajendra hadn’t been seen ever since the demonetization. This confession earned them a reward after one year that happened to be 10% of the found money.
TITLE EXPLAINED:
The title is nothing but a play of words that personifies not just the choked drain pipe full of cash but also Sarita’s character. She is choked with the bonds of motherhood, the duties of a wife, the duties of the home-maker and the agony of failure. To be choked can also be an expression of her current mental health and her constant fear of loss and failure.
HIT OR MISS?
A big fat HIT please. This movie is the embodiment of what thousands of folks had to face because of one sudden overnight decision.
The movie could not have justified better the poor situation of what a lot of families had to go through. The representation of the film is bold and it stimulates that sense of familiarity to the familial situation that has been portrayed.
The lead characters were extremely well played and the dialogues too good to be true.
“Bank me paise milte hai, sympathy nahi. Unke haath jodiye jisko vote diya tha.”