People who came of age with a certain era of Stephen King films might have thought him as much a purveyor of prestige drama with a nostalgic bent as a purveyor of horror. During a 15-year span from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, King novels were adapted into three critical and commercial darlings, none of which contain anything but the most symbolic sort of horror: Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Observers might then have wondered if the drama well had run dry. The last 25 years have not seen similar success for his non-horror adaptations … if there have been any.
The Life of Chuck might herald a turn back in that direction, though Mike Flanagan’s screen version of King’s novella is not nostalgic in the sense of those other films. Much of it is set today, or possibly even the future – unless the world is about to end right now and we just haven’t noticed. (Talking about a literal end of the world, not the metaphorical one we’re arguably living through.) However, that’s only one of the things going on in this structurally ambitious film about a man named Chuck, who isn’t even properly introduced until the film is a third over.
We do see the face of Charles Krantz, played by Tom Hiddleston, on billboards in this world that’s chaotic with a sense of things fatally unravelling. The billboards thank Chuck for 39 great years, so it would seem to be the retirement of a low-level public figure, perhaps a beloved realtor. The denizens of this unravelling world – we spend the most time with those played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan – are bemused by these billboards, but they have bigger concerns. The internet has gone out, power is iffy, and people have started selecting who they want to spend their waning days with, even if it’s not their current partner. The end certainly appears nigh.
The film then shifts to focus on Chuck, but only little vignettes from his life and the lives of his loved ones, specifically the grandparents who were his custodians when his parents died, played by Mia Sara and Mark Hamill. Hamill in particular excels in a role that leans into the fact that Luke Skywalker is now an old man, like none of his previous roles have.
This section isn’t actually the next section, though; it’s the third section, when Chuck is played by Jacob Tremblay and Benjamin Pajak, which involves the mysteries contained within a cupola in the old house where he lives, probably the most traditional King element in this whole story. The middle section is the one with Hiddleston in it, and it involves dancing. We know things don’t go well for Chuck, though, because we’ve already seen him in his death bed, back in the first section.
If it looks like we’re going stingy on the plot details of The Life of Chuck, it’s because the film earns the right to unfold for each viewer the way it was intended to unfold. The reverse chronology of the three sections is already spoiler enough. What Chuck has to do with the potential approaching apocalypse, and why he is being thanked like a beloved realtor, is for the viewer to discover themselves.
That’s not to say that each discovery is always the full realisation of the sense of anticipation this structure has been building in us. But The Life of Chuck is not meant primarily as a movie where tricks and mind-blowing moments are the measure of its success. Flanagan’s film has a throwback quality to the way it’s staged – maybe not to the earlier 20th century, as in the three previously mentioned adaptations late in that century, but to a sort of filmmaking that doesn’t show up so much anymore these days.
For one, the film gets folksy and mildly absurdist narration from the great Nick Offerman. That a little bit recalls the portion of Shawshank Redemption that Morgan Freeman narrated, but it’s employed more whimsically here. Offerman’s knack for introducing new characters, whose relationship to the story we could not possibly fathom, showcases this whimsy perfectly. For example, we don’t know why we’re meeting a street busker/drummer played by Taylor Gordon, but Offerman’s narrator might also tell us what she had for lunch today, which is part of the film’s charm.
This is sort of like what they used to call “hyperlink movies,” where characters are introduced without us understanding their connection to each other, until they all come together in some sort of heavy-handed third act collision. But you’d only call The Life of Chuck that if you wanted to insult it, and the fact is, it does this with more grace, humour and profundity, and less of a third act collision. It’s kind of like the first hyperlink movie you saw, when that format wasn’t yet worn out, only that’s not right either, because The Life of Chuck is playing all the right notes and none of the wrong ones.
The Life of Chuck arrives in cinemas with quite a set of expectations, if you’re going only on history. It won the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and every previous winner dating back to 2012 had then gone on to be nominated for best picture, including three winners, and then two best picture winners in the three years before the streak began. That may not be the destiny for this film – and in a way it’s a film about destiny – but you can certainly see why the people chose it.
The Life of Chuck is currently playing in cinemas.