Mike Flanagan has always undertaken cinematic confrontations with mortality, but none have ever been quite as magnificent and moving as “The Life of Chuck.”
The Tom Hiddleston-starring feature is less of a horror film than it is an existential grappling with the end — while also being a jubilant celebration of the moments that make life worth living along the way. It’s Flanagan’s vibrant equivalent of Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” that finds hope and meaning in his own way just as it is one of the best modern Stephen King adaptations one could hope for.
Building off King’s novella, the feature bursts outward like the creation of a vast galaxy while holding you close as the stars begin to fade away. It’s as frequently darkly funny as it is emotionally shattering, gently yet firmly pushing us to confront the prospect of the end along with Flanagan. When we then come out on the other side of his vision, the dance he took us on is one we only wish we could do one more time.
Of course, we can’t. Life’s beauty also comes in how finite it is. We can’t endure forever, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t dance under the stars when we can. In lesser hands, this could easily become overly sentimental, but Flanagan has never been one to smooth over the rougher edges. Instead, he molds them into a work that’s honest, melancholic and devastating. It’s not only his best film yet, but it’s the work he’s been building up to over his entire career.
The film, which premiered Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival with both Flanagan and King in attendance, faithfully tells its story in reverse. We pick up in something close to the present day where the world as we know it is coming to an end. Everyone has seemed to grow used to this concept, but that doesn’t mean it is any less painful when brought face to face with it.
We initially follow a teacher, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a nurse, played by Karen Gillan, who were once married but have since divorced. With death bearing down on them, they decide to reconnect before the end while remaining followed by the smiling face of Charles Krantz (Hiddleston) who keeps appearing on billboards, televisions and, soon, even their homes. He’s being congratulated for “39 Great Years,” though we don’t fully understand yet what for. That is until we trace backward through Chuck’s life with all the moments of joy and loss it contains.
Any other details about what happens would do a disservice to the film. As narrated by Nick Offerman, we hear all of the ways that this story is about both the everything of life and the impending nothing. It’s about the way we all try to make sense of what we know is coming and how, even in the knowing that death is coming for us all, we find a way to carry on. There aren’t always answers, but that only makes Flanagan’s film that much more of a crushing confrontation with oblivion. We can feel the weight of the world crashing down on us, but “The Life of Chuck” threads this all through the beauty of existence.
Flanagan, serving as his own editor, delicately cuts in the moments of joy where we dance in the kitchen, laying you flat when they flash briefly onto screen. As life’s memories accumulate in our minds and the body succumbs, is this not what we will hold on to?
Flanagan is rather open about how he ponders this question, but he never sacrifices subtly in this pursuit. Instead, there is a sense of silliness and wry wit that only makes the emotional gut punches knock the wind out of you that much more. There are monologues that echo each other, but they never feel repetitive. One, delivered by Flanagan’s wife and creative partner Kate Siegel, who plays a teacher talking to young Chuck, is just about the most quietly annihilating scene either has ever done.
As “The Life of Chuck” unfolds before us, there are more and more of these scenes that slowly grow into something truthfully and transcendentally stunning. It’s a film that encapsulates so much of what King’s original writing was getting at about what we all must eventually face when reaching our end, just as it is completely Flanagan. It’s a merging of two creative minds that is the best of both. Even when it drags and stumbles a bit in the last act, it always finds its feet.
As precisely shot by cinematographer Eben Bolter with music by The Newton Brothers, there are scenes that linger and loop back on themselves with such unexpected power that you could almost miss them if you weren’t looking for them. There are the more clear points of poetic connection, namely the repeated reading of “Song of Myself, 51” by Walt Whitman as well as repeated references back to one Carl Sagan with his idea of the cosmic calendar, though there are also things that are much more small and fleeting though no less valuable. Flanagan encourages us to stop and pay attention to these moments, not in some sappy type of greeting card ethos, but because it is essential to living in the shadow of death.
Piece by piece in his tremendous exploration of life tracing backward from death, we see life’s full picture emerge just as we too go to pieces in the face of it. Flanagan’s simple yet spectacular final shot silences all the noise to let us sit with that critical, compassionate note. What a truly beautiful, haunting sight it is to see. Chuck is dead, we are dead. Long live Chuck, long live us.
