Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai’ on Netflix, an Indian Movie That’s Part Domestic Drama, Part Suspense-Thriller

Netflix India’s Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai posits a fascinating premise: What if you constantly fought with your spouse about money? (OK, maybe not a stretch.) And what would you do if your kitchen drain started coughing up large rolls of cash? (Well, that seems like fantasy.) And then, what if the cash suddenly became nearly worthless because the government announced a noble, but wrongheaded nationwide demonetization? (Then you must live in India.) But what if you worked in a bank? (Hmm, the plot thicks.) Sound like a movie you might watch? (Maybe.)

CHOKED: PAISA BOLTA HAI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Sarita (Saiyami Kher) once stood on stage, live on national TV, dressed to the nines, ready to sing her heart out. And she froze up. Nothing came out. Silence. Embarrassment. Shame. Trauma. Sushant (Roshan Mathew) was her guitarist, and is now her husband. It’s Mumbai, 2016, and they have a young son and a nice-ish apartment in a middle-class chawl. She has a decent-paying government job at a bank. He’s unemployed, discontented with the thought of a blue-collar job and has debts here and there; he tends to sit around all day and not do the dishes, or even play music like he used to. Sarita is fed up with bearing the weight of their financial burden. Sushant takes serious offense when a neighbor accuses him of being “the wife” in the family. They’re often at odds.

But the film doesn’t open on their domestic anti-bliss. Upstairs in their building, a man in shadow rolls wads of cash, wraps them in plastic and hides them in a drainpipe. What’s he thinking? I don’t think he’s thinking at all when he deposits tens of thousands of rupees in a plumbing system shared by dozens of building residents. He can’t be thinking that’s a safe place for the money, can he? Wouldn’t he be better off digging a hole and burying it? I know — stop poking holes and get on with it, because if he didn’t do a very stupid thing it wouldn’t pose a compelling moral conundrum to a movie protagonist.

So Sarita’s haunted by her reality-show implosion every night when the lights go off. The kitchen sink has been an issue, and at 4 a.m. one restless way-too-early-morning, she hears a gurgle, pops the cap from the floor drain and out urps the money. She doesn’t tell Sushant, maybe out of spite. Their rift is that serious, and he’s been that much of a jerk. So she keeps secrets, and spends a bit, and has a strange man following her to and from work, and the local gossips titter hither and yon. And then the demonetization hits, and her little windfall suddenly gets even more complicated.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There’s a little bit of underrated 2003 drama Owning Mahowny in this — Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a banker who skims funds from his employer in order to fuel his gambling addiction.  

Performance Worth Watching: Sarita is an upright woman on a slippery slope, a one-time creative soul forced into drudging pragmatism. Kher’s performance is increasingly nuanced as the character’s life ebbs and flows more and more dramatically.

Memorable Dialogue: Sarita and Sushant quarrel about who does what around here, prompting Sushant to get defensive: “Why bring Candy Crush into this?”

Sex and Skin: None. 

Our Take: It helps to understand the demonetization thing, which may alienate non-Indian viewers. So hat tip to Wikipedia: In 2016, the governments yanked 500 and 1,000 rupee bills from circulation, giving citizens a limited amount of time to exchange their old currency for new bills, and significantly limited the amount they could exchange. It was an attempt to flush out counterfeit bills and cripple cash-hoarding “black money” organizations — terrorists, organized criminals, etc. But it did more harm than good, causing panic and disrupting the economy.

So there’s a loose metaphor at play in Choked, and it hinges somewhat on having experienced the political context of the story. Plot details were a little muddy to this stupide Americain, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating the essential elements of domestic drama and suspenseful thriller that prominent Indian director Anurag Kashyap weaves together. The film sags dramatically in spots, and takes a good quarter of the run time to get to the point. But it works to establish its primary characters, who initially show one side of themselves, but grow more complicated as events transpire: Shushant is a decent man in a layabout’s fur. And Sarita, initially sympathetic for her myriad personal struggles, shows shades of greed and entitlement the more she fishes money from the trap. They’re both flawed, but never irredeemable.

Choked is smartly executed, visually-speaking, and features an effective jazzy-drum score that heightens the tension, once it finally gets rolling. Kashyap captures the claustrophobia of their living space, and stages a highly effective nightmare sequence in which Sarita gets her arm caught in the drain (I squirmed). The film exquisitely contrasts the helplessness of Sarita’s singing mishap with her gig at the bank, which temporarily puts her at the fulcrum of power — a position that’ll test the tensile strength of anyone’s moral flexibility. 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Choked effectively underscores the old assertion that the personal and the political are often the same thing. You don’t have to be from India to appreciate it, but it certainly helps.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai on Netflix