Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novella quietly explores how one life intersects with many, even as the world falls apart.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Neon’s “The Life of Chuck”—winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival—breaks the mold of superhero films, remakes, prequels, sequels and reboots. For starters, it’s about the end of the world for real, much like Adam McKay’s lesser “Don’t Look Up” (2021)—and what that might be like. “Chuck” scares the hell out of you. But it’s also funny and charming. The film asks us: Why is an accountant named Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) suddenly everywhere in this world that is coming to an end, on billboards, on the backs of bus benches, on televisions? Why is he the person of the moment? It’s downright perverse. But, then again, the story is about Chuck. Isn’t it?
Directed and adapted by Mike Flanagan, of the disappointing 2019 Stephen King adaptation “Doctor Sleep” from a novella by Stephen King in the 2020 collection “If It Bleeds,” “The Life of Chuck” begins in a classroom. Teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tries reciting Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” to his class, but his students learn from their phones that a part of California has fallen into the sea (California has undoubtedly taken a lot of real punishment lately). Earthquakes, wild fires, floods and plague and worst of all Pornhub is down, and soon the entire internet is not far behind.
Marty’s ex-wife Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), a nurse with whom he remains friendly, tells him over the phone about a spike in suicides and the toll her work is taking on her. Distraught, she says she thinks of herself as an “undertaker.” We hear the lament of a lonely piano. We are reminded at least twice of Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. Somebody cues up the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin.’“A soothing narrator (Nick Offerman) fills in some blanks and will later tell Chuck’s life story.
Flanagan has adapted King, Edgar Allan Poe (“The Fall of the House of Usher”) and Shirley Jackson (“The Haunting of Hill House”). Flanagan’s 2013 second feature, “Oculus,” which he co-wrote with Jeff Howard and Jeff Seidman, was a hit for Blumhouse. If not much else. Flanagan is a genre filmmaker, and this is certainly his best effort. Divorce comes up as a subject so often in “Chuck” that you’d think King had been considering how much it would cost him to split up with Tabitha.
However, the film’s true subject is mortality—the mortality of the cosmos and that of one person within it. It’s the end of times, last times, end of the world, apocalypse, Doomsday, Ragnarok, you name it. The story unfolds in reverse, beginning with “Act 3: Thanks, Chuck,” which ends with a terrifying visual flourish. We don’t meet Chuck in the flesh until “Act 2: Buskers,” in which accountant Chuck, an amateur dancer, stops beside a busking drummer in the street (the film was shot in Alabama) and begins to dance with utter abandon to her beat. Another young woman (Annalise Basso of “Oculus”), who has just been dumped via text message, joins him. A crowd of onlookers forms.
Watching “The Life of Chuck” is an out-of-body experience. In “Act 1: I Contain Multitudes,” we learn that when he was a boy Chuck’s parents died, and he was joined in his childhood home with a cupola by his grandparents Sarah (a radiant Mia Sara) and Albie (a great Mark Hamill), who raise him (and feed him a steady diet of movie classics). Sarah teaches Chuck, played by Jacob Tremblay at this point, to dance. Albie, a hard drinker, teaches him math and refuses to let Chuck inside the cupola, which he keeps padlocked. One of Albie’s best friends is the local undertaker (the venerable Carl Lumbly). Before he got divorced from Felicia, Anderson taught at Chuck’s school. Does the math make any sense? A girl skater skates from one chapter to another. In “The Life of Chuck,” our existence is multitudinous and, if we’re lucky, full of friends, family, love and a measure of happiness, until it is not.
‘The Life of Chuck’
Rating: R for language
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillian, Mia Sara
Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Flanagan and Stephen King
Running time: 110 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters
Grade: A-
Boston Movie News 