The Film Review: “The Life of Chuck“
By Ross
We start, at what appears to be a latter chapter, with the tease of going backwards so we can understand the world that we have going forward. Chuck, whose life we are leaning into, or at least we suppose we are going to examine in the rear view mirror, first appears before us, larger than life, grinning down at a confused teacher, most effectively portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Young Vic’s Blue/Orange; “12 Years a Slave“), while he sits, stuck in an increasingly intense traffic jam. The immovability of the moment is just one of many haunting and frightening constructs that creep into this seemingly paralleled world, where things look a lot like our current situation, but effectively, an altered plane of existence where we all might be heading sooner rather than later. Natural disasters are flaring up all across the globe, as fires, floods, and eruptions darken the horizon and the future, forcing everyone, including Ejiofor’s strongly created character (maybe the best of the lot), to examine the lives they are living. The internet and wireless connectivity have started to fail, causing a floundering that we don’t quite know how to handle and internally dread, even for an instant, let alone a permanent future.
“The earth is large, and contains multitudes,” we are told, “but it also contains me“. And in that street view drumroll, we find a reframing that is sharp and disturbing in the three chapters of The Life of Chuck, directed and written by Mike Flanagan (“Doctor Sleep“), based on a short story by Stephen King, especially as it all seems so honestly possible and inconceivable unbearable all at the same time. The confusion and dread are real, as we watch (and feel) the anxiety around what is happening to the world grow exponentially, knowing that the lives these people inhabit could very well be our reality in an instant as we watch our own democratic systems and our treatment of our planet crumble and fall apart around us. Framings of sanity start to turn off and disconnect, like our dependency on screened distractions and cell phone connectivity. The no-bars disengagement pushes and pokes at our feelings of normalcy, making us stop to reexamine our lives and possibly at what we have lost along the way. And as all this starts to degrade faster and faster towards some disastrous outcome, the tributes of the smiling accountant, Chuck, haunt the horizon, congratulating his many years of service, but for what, and to whom?
These posters, billboards, and TV commercials start to expand and replace windows to our souls and spaces, as our confused teacher walks the long way over to reform a bond that maybe should not have been broken. But it’s hard to tell. It’s an engaging, thoughtful chapter that really registers, making us curious about what came before and what the meaning of the darkening sky is. Then there is the darkening flick of a reframing, throwing us back into the middle chapter, “chapter two“, that finally introduces us to the everyman Chuck Krantz, accountant, father, and husband, played compassionately by a very connecting Tom Hiddleston (Broadway’s Betrayal; “The Night Manager“) who was haunting the world we had so thoroughly become invested in. Narrated fascinatingly by Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation“), who gets a wee moment in the prior segment to shine, the film’s generic voice delivers us into the other framing with ease, guiding us to find spontaneous connection with accountant Chuck and those around him, and to help start the process of unpacking what we just witnessed.
It’s the internal connection, to Chuck and to another, who happen upon a drumming third, that takes us through a dance sequence where the pieces start to fall into place, but not so neatly yet. It feels, for the most part, quite disconnected from the troubled teacher looking at the man in the adverts hanging over chapter three‘s world. Yet we sense that something is creeping in from the background that will pull this all together. Hints are given, but nothing concrete, until the final act, “chapter one” of The Life of Chuck takes us back to a few different moments of his childhood, embodied by both Jacob Tremblay (“Room“) and Benjamin Pajak (Encores’ Oliver!; “Tiny Fugitives”). And in that final reframing, we hope to understand it all, about the life and death of this simple, but lovely man who embraced love and family in non-surprising ways and means.
And in a way, we do learn and understand what it all means and adds up to, but not in straightforward accounting terms. “The Life of Chuck” is both frustratingly simple yet daunting and abstract, emotionally distancing, yet surprisingly connecting. It feels like it should hit us hard on a few different, pure emotional levels, especially when the earth-shattering reveal finally presents itself, and it does. But it also doesn’t, all in the same breath. Supported by the most fascinating of casts, which includes Mark Hamill (“Star Wars“) as Albie Kraantz, Kate Siegel (“The Haunting of Hill House“) as Miss Richards, and Samantha Sloyan (“Hush“) as Miss Rohrbacher, the film makes us feel something unexplainable, and maybe difficult to construct in logic terms. The abstractions that settle into our soul feel hauntingly sincere and tender, and we smile with something that resembles understanding, somewhat removed, like watching life in a rear-view mirror. But the biggest problem is that we don’t really get to fully know the adult Chuck beyond a simple vantage point and superficially formed framing.
We are told about his multitudes, but it’s hard to unpack the meaning of life and death around those platitudes. Ideas are rolled out inside sermons and coming-of-age scenarios that are effective in charming us with their tender detailing, thanks to the very solid work of cinematographer Eben Bolter (“The Last of Us“). Yet the Chuck embodied by the very game Hiddleston doesn’t give us enough fully formed statistics to add up to much other than the charm of the actor and the sweetness of his memory-laden moves. Pajak, as the younger Chuck, has more numbers to fill his accounting columns, and therefore, his connecting ties feel stronger and more engaging. Or is it just his age that we can readily connect to?
We leave feeling something about the reason for living life being a big dance against death, but beyond that (and the dread about the way we’ve treated this planet we live on), The Life of Chuck, directed with care, feels like a bubbling creek rather than a cascading waterfall of emotions. The film, which surprisingly won the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival (over Jacques Audiard’s musical crime melodrama “Emilia Perez,” starring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez, and the second runner up, Sean Baker’s “Anora.”), remains mid-level King, without the great connecting ties to something bigger than what is laid out simply before us. It is life-affirming but not as deeply magical or profound as I was hoping for when I walked into the TIFF Lighthouse complex in Toronto. Yet I was moved by Flanagan’s musing, and thankful for the unwrapping of a life of a simple everyman and his impact on the world that dances around inside his loving mind.
