The Life of Chuck
Writers: Mike Flanagan; based on the novella by Stephen King
Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, Annalise Basso, Taylor Gordon, Nick Offerman, Carl Lumbly, Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Samantha Sloyan
I'm going to spoil a bit here, but that's in keeping with King's original novella and Mike Flanagan's third (very faithful) King adaptation. Uncle Stevie is keen on foreshadowing, habitually forecasting his characters' doom well in advance. With The Life of Chuck, the exercise is apparent from the jump; Chuck will be shuffling from this mortal coil, and imminently.
Through three acts set out in reverse we meet the man and his multitudes. Flanagan is well-suited to the narrative and tonal balancing act, soft-shoeing to the abyss before delivering on King's soulful paean to serendipity and to our role in the universe, both enormous and infinitesimal. Nick Offerman narrates. Perfect, right?
We start at the end.
Another sliver of California plunges into the Pacific. Ohio burns. Closer to home, a sinkhole opens, devouring the morning's traffic. Commuters abandon their vehicles and totter back to their neighborhoods. These are the agonal breaths of a dying universe. It's the end of the world between Chuck Krantz's ears, though its inhabitants — an amalgamation of everyone he's ever met — only know that name and face (Tom Hiddleston) from the billboards and bus stop placards popping up throughout town thanking him for 39 great years.
Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a high school teacher — or the idea of one — navigating these uncertain times, striving for normalcy and routine as the world unravels. "Marty" doesn't know that he's a composite of memories in a dying man's brain, what Ebenezer Scrooge might dismiss as an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of an underdone potato. For him, this is all quite real. Heightened as it is — volcanic eruptions in Germany! — audiences will likely relate to his plight. Things are bad out there, and it feels like it's all leading to full dark, no stars. Existential dread is our constant companion.
Perhaps the biggest difference here is that Marty and his neighbors can no longer doomscroll. The internet, we learn, flickered out over a short period of time. Mirroring Chuck's own diminished capacity, websites glitched with garbled misinformation before disappearing one by one. Synapses just stopped firing. As cable news broadcasts are replaced with whining test patterns and further tributes to the omnipresent Chuck — "our last meme," Marty dubs him — he embarks on a suburban odyssey to the doorstep of his ex-wife, nurse Felicia (Karen Gillan). On the way, he encounters other characters and the truisms they embody, avatars of all that Chuck has learned in his brief time on Earth.
Soon, the stars start to blink out of existence. Marty, who's so far found comfort in Carl Sagan and the long view of humanity's miniscule place on the condensed calendar of existence, starts to fear the inevitable blackout. The uncertainty.
It's haunting. Leave it to King and Flanagan to harness Capra and Lovecraft in one poignant, terrifying moment.
The remaining acts take us outside Chuck's head and into his history. Act Two: Buskers Forever zeroes in on a moment of serendipity toward the end of his 39 years, when fate or happenstance led him to spontaneously break into dance on Boylston Street in Boston as a local musician (Taylor Gordon) played the drums. It harkens back to Andy Dufresne playing opera music for a yard full of transfixed prisoners in The Shawshank Redemption. Across King's catalog we see such moments, often presented as anecdotes, crystalized in characters' memories. Minor miracles. Events that define lives. And if you dance with the grace and confidence of Hiddleston here, nobody's sure to forget.
The concluding Act One: I Contain Multitudes details Chuck's youth, how his grandmother (Mia Sara) taught him to dance and his grandfather (Mark Hamill) taught him to doubt. But this is also a Stephen King story, and ghosts haunt the eaves of even the more grounded tales. An eleven year old Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) coaxes the truth of the locked Victorian cupola from his grandfather. To look inside invites unwanted truths and the weight of prophecy as exacting as the old man's ledgers.
Reminiscent of Flanagan's examination of death in Midnight Mass, The Life of Chuck is ultimately a tone poem on our complicated relationship with the certainty of death and all of the uncertainty that comes with it. How do we navigate the pain and cruelty of existence with the knowledge that none of us make it out alive? Do we embrace the constants, the sure things? Do we risk it all on the unknowns?
This is King's guide to living, on finding one's step in spite of looming dread.
And all of that is a wash if Chuck can't carry a universe. In a stacked cast — with standout performances from Flanagan regulars Carl Lumbly, Kate Siegel, and Samantha Sloyan — short king Benjamin Pajak may be the most valuable player, portraying Chuck at his most luminous and inquisitive, moonwalking directly into your heart. King is known for horror, but constant readers know that his real knack is in coming of age stories, the Great Expectations of it all. Through the inventive structure and some deftly curated moments, he's arrived at one of his best.
Flanagan is three for three with this one. The sentimentality is sure to rankle some, but this is a celebration of the relationships and memories that amount to a life lived. It's also unafraid of getting a little afraid. Matthew Lillard's Gus is rightfully concerned about the situation with the bees. The world inside Chuck's head isn't a fantasy realm being swept up by some abstract Nothing. It's reflective of real world calamity. The ocean really do be rising.
But that doesn't mean we should stop roller skating. We loved it once. We probably still do.
Thanks for the reminder, Chuck.
