Film review: The Life of Chuck

Maybe I’m growing cynical in my old age, but I didn’t feel the emotional punch others are getting from Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck. I like Flanagan, though. His Netflix horror shows are great, satisfying, and slow-burning TV. Midnight Mass, in particular, is a masterpiece. And I also liked the unexpectedly good sequel to Kubrick’s The Shining, Doctor Sleep. His style stands out from that of other genre directors. He likes to let his characters get to know each other and talk, not to dump exposition on us, but to slowly reveal the depth of their personality to the audience. It’s good stuff. It helps him write his way out of a meandering monologue.

But, to a fault, he idolises Stephen King. And for all we can say about the most prolific American writer of all time, nuance is not one of his stronger points. That’s why Kubrick changed The Shining to the point King hated the adaptation. A concerned filmmaker approaches King’s source material with trepidation but explores the premise before running with the concept in a completely different direction. Because you risk exposing the banality of that story the moment images are attached to it. In Flanagan, King (who is here credited as Executive Producer) finds a devoted fan who doesn’t question his impulses and presents his voice so thoroughly that it even includes King’s narration in the form of the deep, imposing voice of Nick Offerman.

The Life of Chuck is based on a Stephen King short story that follows the context of the day Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) dies at the young age of 39. In the first chapter, a primary school teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) deal with personal concerns while facing the end of the world. In the second chapter, Chuck dances on the street to the tune of a busker. And finally, a young Chuck (first played by Benjamin Pajak and later by Jacob Tremblay), who lives with his grandparents (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill) after the premature death of his parents and unborn sister, finds solace in dancing, first with his grandmother and later in school.

If this feels paltry for a story about death celebrating life, you’re on the right path. Flanagan injects the story with King’s dim philosophical narration framed around the most inane interpretation of Walt Whitman’s quote “I contain multitudes”. It makes this a decisively self-centred view of the world that I reckon goes hand-in-hand with the experience of privileged white middle-class men from the American New England. The point, it seems, is to find a romanticising solace in the act of death. The film often cuts back to Chuck on his deathbed with his wife, a wife who never comes up in either of the chapters. He’s 39, she’s going to be left a widow at a crucial point in her life. Maybe I’m getting old, but the prospect of death is not a peaceful possibility, but a scary thought. It’s me facing oblivion and not being there to see my kids grow. It’s my wife who is left alone with two hyperactive children. It’s my mother having to bury her only child. It’s the prospect of the weight of loss to be imposed on the people I love as I slowly become a blimp in their memory. What is this egotistical view that the world revolves around me, when death proves it otherwise?

The multitudes we all contain aren’t the people we’ve met and the experiences we had that live inside of us, like the film proposes, but the contradictory and complex side of human nature is completely absent here. Chuck is a shell of a person, a two-dimensional being who barely suffers when tragedy afflicts him. As a child, he seems to develop a crush on an older girl, but that’s probably related to the fact that she can dance as well as he can. Chuck’s grandfather becomes an alcoholic after the death of Chuck’s parents. But there’s no drama: he’s the most functioning and nicest alcoholic trauma has ever created. At least someone in the film seems to be so in touch with their soul that they actually suffer. Because Chuck, our hero, is a nothing person.

I couldn’t connect emotionally with it, but I’m in the minority. The Life of Chuck is as saccharine as the Ben Stiller remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It says nothing profound about us, but looks us in the eye to convey this philosophical grandeur. But the experience it has about life and death is the same as a 14-year-old boy listening to Sigur Rós for the first time and unlocking that part of the brain that tells us it will all be alright as long as the world is our pony.

Maybe I’m too harsh because the reaction to the film has been so overwhelmingly positive. The reality is, there is nothing hateful about it: it is just corny and pedestrian. Flanagan writes well, and the actors give solid performances (especially Hamill, who is almost unrecognisable). Flanagangers will rejoice in seeing the usual suspects in the cast (Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, and Samantha Sloyan all pop up at different points), but mileage may vary to find the film compelling—or maybe for someone proud of their blind optimism.

Verdict: 2 out of 5
For those who have never seen Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death, which is a much more profound experience than this film.