The Life of Chuck Review: A Life-Affirming Journey!
A person’s life can be characterized as a multitude of things; impactful, short, worthwhile, adventurous, traumatic, or anything in between. Oftentimes, cinema suggests that the journey through life, possessing a number of obstacles along the way, is a gift that encapsulates an individual’s choices, actions, and relationships that impacts as little as one person or a million.
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The Life of Chuck is a deviation from Mike Flanagan’s usual horror projects but possesses the same melancholy feeling as his previous work as the audience begins to see how Chuck’s life unfolds. Where many films that focus on life proceeds to move in chronological order, displaying the building blocks of a person’s years on Earth, The Life of Chuck is able to capture Charles Krantz’s time in three acts. It is an encapsulation of the fantasy and joy we can bring into the world even if the end result is always a combination of darkness and grief. This film shows its audience that the promise of death is not something to hide from but instead pushes us to make sure the moments we do spend on earth are worthwhile.
Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a middle school teacher who is trying to adapt to the changing world around him of destruction, worldly tragedy, and the loss of signals and communication with the outside world. As the days get closer to a possible end of the world he and his ex-wife Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) begin to reconcile in the wake of oblivion. Along with the rest of the townspeople, mysterious billboards and signs begin to appear in town thanking Charles Krantz, a man none of them know, for a great 39 years.
With the final moments together looming, their connection to this man Chuck begins to unfold to the audience, even if Marty and Felicia are still in the dark. Starting with Act 3 of the film, its end to beginning structure poses a slightly upsetting realization of the progression or regression of happiness as we age. Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) is seen in three portions of his life, where his handle on life seems to be stronger in the younger ages we see him.
Where adults are often expected to have a better understanding of themselves as they age, with their focus more clear on their job, family, etc, the film’s reverse chronological order is a commentary on how sometimes the most secure we feel in our lives is when we have the mind of a child, where every possibility is in reach. In this, the film it is able to create an uplifting product, seeing the joy and charm of Hiddleston and his younger self (played by Benjamin Pajak) to appreciate the brief but beautiful moments in life.
With any film on life, there is an expectation to decipher, even if only a little bit, about its meaning and why we are all here. It is an enormous feat to tackle. Although it makes it clear in The Life of Chuck its intentions on life and death through straightforward dialogue, the care and love radiating from the script made it feel more deserved. Most of the film plays on the life structure we saw in 2015 with the film Steve Jobs, displaying three major moments in Chuck’s life that have shaped the rest of himself around them.
Where the film loses this creative choice is when it deviates from this structure to reflect on Chuck’s teenage years with a flash forward of Chuck in Act 3. The film loses a little bit of its uniqueness after straying away from the order it creates from the beginning when it decides to show a linear series of events in Act 1. But, what the film creates before this point is so endearing and bittersweet that it can be overlooked without the film falling off.
Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” is utilized enormously in The Life of Chuck with his famous line “I am large, I contain multitudes” being discussed. When Chuck’s classmates fail to listen to the poem read by their teacher Miss Richards (Kate Siegel), young Chuck feels intrigued by the idea of everything he has ever known, every person he has ever met, and all the experiences he has ever had, making up the person that he is and will become. Through this scene and the rest of the film, Mike Flanagan is able to show that not only do we all contain multitudes but the world contains multitudes of each of us.
This allows our spirit to have an impact on more people in the world and more of the world itself. The Life of Chuck blends fantasy elements with the realistic nature of the lives we all live as we move through the years. It displays the magical quality of life through the film’s bending of genres while still possessing a dramatic feel that mirrors the multitudes of things life throws at us. The Life of Chuck is a captivating and fantastical film that is able to achieve its most magical moments in the simplicity of the everyday bits of choices we make as humans.
‘The Life of Chuck’ Rating – 4/5
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