Director: Mike Flanagan
Writers: Mike Flanagan, Stephen King
Stars: Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, Matthew Lillard
Synopsis: A life-affirming, genre-bending story based on Stephen King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz.
As I sat at my laptop, wondering how to begin writing about Mike Flanagan’s latest film, The Life of Chuck, two different anecdotes popped into my head. Neither are necessarily thrilling, but they both are oddly linked to the film in question, which celebrated its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The first is closer to an observation than anything else. More like a sparse recalling of a memory. I can’t quite pinpoint the first time I stumbled onto Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” But the one thing that stuck with me most from the legendary poem is, of course, “I am large. I contain multitudes.” I remember finding it so distinctly profound at the time, and from time to time, something I’ll watch or read will reignite that memory of discovering it. So to hear it read verbatim in The Life of Chuck was quite the shock to the senses. It primed my emotions for something I was not prepared for, which I will get to in a bit. If I walked away with anything from this film, and I walked away with a lot, it’s that there’s no rush. We’ll get there. The second thing I began to think about is how long it’s been since I went dancing.
Sure, I love to dance whenever the feeling arises. If I’m commuting to work, I’m likely moving some part of my body on the platform or train as I wait to get to work, home, or more often than not, the movies. But I mean fully dancing all night long. For a time, I remained in the contact list of a friend’s phone as “Dancing Alex.” I always found it comical, but what can I say: the only activity I love more than dancing is watching movies, and the former has a better ring to it, I think. Anyways, the reason I bring that up is because, during one extended dance number that breaks out randomly in The Life of Chuck, I was again not prepared for the flood of memories and emotions that Flanagan would pull out of me. Yet there I was: misty-eyed and bordering on full-blown weeping in a sold-out theater, surrounded by strangers I have never met, colleagues and friends, and some of the most cherished artists of my life. And something rang in my head that Flanagan said when introducing the film. He made note that life is “all about moments,” and that it’s important to not only make note of those moments, but to hold onto them. And experiencing this film for the first time is a moment I will certainly never forget.
The film begins, funnily enough, in the least dramatic way imaginable. In fact, the first half of the first act of The Life of Chuck plays out like a full-blown comedy. If David Dastmalchian popping up for a single scene acting despondent about losing access to an NSFW website doesn’t leave you with full-on belly laughs, I don’t know what to tell you! The jokes are flying as Flanagan loosely sets up the frame of his film. And built into the very foundation of its structure is comedy, yes. But there’s also a massive amount of intrigue. It almost instantly tugs at the curiosity of the audience, introducing a litany of ideas that will be explored over the course of a lifetime. But Stephen King’s short story of the same name, and this film, both share the key idea of some mysteries being better off unsolved. In fact, The Life of Chuck fully embraces the notion that there are countless mysteries to be found within the human experience. Does seeing some of them go unsolved make the experience any less? It seems like Flanagan and King don’t think that to be the case. The world is chock full of mysteries, both intimate and grand. Why do some of us wait until it’s too late to say what matters most? Why do terrible tragedies happen to good people? Why do nightmares exist? Within The Life of Chuck, but also within the life of Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), lies countless questions such as these, and many more. Not all of them are answered, but it’s not due to a faulty script. It’s wholly intentional. This is the legendary King we’re talking about. The man has built an entire career off the idea that we can’t always tell what’s awaiting us in the dark. And it’s not until we step directly into it that we can figure it out, or be absolutely terrified by what’s discovered. But there’s sometimes a third option in King stories. And as I’ve gotten older, I find myself being more and more drawn to it.
Over a wildly successful and beyond well-established career, King has provided us with some of the greatest stories ever conceived. He has terrified millions of people throughout his life, myself included. But many of his novels have also caused us Constant Readers to weep. He has the ability to shift from horror to intense drama and earnest existentialism at a moment’s notice. Much of it is present in his full-blown horror stories, but when he crafts up something potently human like The Shawshank Redemption or 11/22/63 or Fairy Tale or The Life of Chuck, it feels extra special. And it serves as a reminder that, in life, what we expect is not always what we might need. Sometimes it’s the surprises that affect us more than anything. And it shouldn’t necessarily surprise us at this point in his career that King can craft a plethora of stories within different styles and genres, but the ways in which he goes about them basically always catches me off-guard in the most exciting ways imaginable. The Life of Chuck, in arguably its stand-out sequence during the second act, does just that. At the turn of a hat, Flanagan is able to craft a sequence so dazzling and exciting that, before you know it, you’ve found yourself getting choked up over what it leads to.
During the second act, narrator Nick Offerman details the innermost thoughts of a busker playing her drums. While her hat remains free of tips, the narrator clues us in that she’s not particularly worried. In her mind, “There’s time.” For a film that opens up with supposedly the very final moments of the planet, it’s a darkly comic idea to frame a sequence around. Due to the story occurring in reverse chronological order, there’s not much time at all! But don’t we all know that already, regardless of how it might actually happen? Maybe the universe itself won’t implode before our time is up. But on an individual level, we all know that, eventually, there is an end. Knowing that, the question then becomes whether or not we’ll be able to accept it. And that’s obviously incredibly tough for some. Myself included. But if we know it’s all going to be over someday, why not try and go out on top? If the inevitable cannot be changed, we shouldn’t let the house simply walk away with all the joys of winning. Let’s try and go out smiling, or at least try to go with memories held tightly enough to make us smile in those final moments.
So upon seeing Chuck walking in her general direction, the busker finds a way to lure him in. And in an impromptu shift of the downbeat, she’s surprised at the reaction she sees. Quite frankly, the entire audience was equally shocked. Chuck even appears shocked, acting more possessed than dancing of his own accord at times. For the next seven minutes or so, Flanagan indulges his viewers with something that every fan of Hiddleston’s would love to see: an extended dancing sequence with him dressed in a full suit. To be quite frank, it’s incredible. It feels like one of the best musical numbers in a very long while. And the reason for this isn’t just because of the choreography and direction (which are both great!). It’s because, in this sequence, Flanagan captures something deeply genuine. Despite being a sequence that undoubtedly had tons of prep work going into it, he is able to somehow bottle up the beautiful nature of impromptu feeling and release it on camera. For this sequence, you do believe as if Chuck, and by that nature, Hiddleston, has been completely swept up in the rhythms and beats being carried to his ears. There’s a joy present in the dancing here that doesn’t feel scripted. It’s an undeniably charismatic performance in a film full of them. It’s a beacon of hope. We know that Chuck doesn’t have much longer to live. He might even have a suspicious feeling. But in that very moment, when that very particular beat is heard, that’s a worry for the future. And when we arrive at the future, realizing that the final moment is soon upon us, we’ll hopefully have something to look back upon. Something like this moment. Hopefully, that joyous memory will be enough to walk through the door smiling.
As the film comes to a close in its longest act, we see Chuck as a young boy. Chuck isn’t present for much of the film, but his presence is obviously felt. And it’s here, in the final (but chronologically first) act, that we learn all there is to know about the man (or in this case, the young boy). After all this intrigue built up for a man popping up across billboards, radio stations, television broadcasts, and seemingly other-worldly beacons, who is Chuck? He’s just a boy. A boy who loves to dance, and watch musicals with his grandma, and occasionally, do math with his grandpa. He has the same curious mind as any other young child. He has the same charm, and the same worries, and the same occasionally mundane stretches of time that we all deal with as children. But, and this is the beauty of much of King’s work, he is everything. Not just to the story, but to life itself. Whether or not we feel it, all of us have a story. And all of us contain the entire history of the time we live through. As Whitman writes, and as Chuck’s teacher (the ever-charming Kate Siegel) displays to him, we contain multitudes. Aspects of who we are may contradict themselves, but so what? Life is more exciting if we embrace all that comes our way and find the ability to shift to what a scenario may deem necessary. Towards the end of the film, Chuck’s grandpa (a great Mark Hamill), breaks down a very academic-minded way of approaching life.
And he’s not wrong in a way. The mystery of life, in all of humanity’s quest for understanding in the hopes of feeling larger than it is, can be broken down rationally into formulas and mathematical solutions. But that’s not all there is to life. It’s simply too expansive and too ever-changing to be distilled into a clear-cut definition. With life comes a sense of pure feeling. There are some things that we just do because they feel right. Walk miles with a stranger. Break out into dance on the street. Open a locked door in our home because our curiosity overwhelms our fears of what’s on the other side. There’s no correct formula to living life. There’s just taking the day as it comes, day in and day out. And we do all of this knowing what will happen someday. Flanagan repeats an idea several times throughout the film: “the waiting is the hard part.” But here’s the thing about life: that’s the only part we have. If all we can do is wait, at least let’s make it the most entertaining and joyous and moving wait of our lives. Despite being a film centered around the death of everything, the life-affirming core of The Life of Chuck might very well prove this to be Flanagan’s masterpiece.
The Life of Chuck celebrated its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. For more information on the film, head right here.
