02-06-2025
Movie review: 'Life of Chuck' affirms joy in dark times
1 of 5 | Tom Hiddleston and Annalise Basso dance in "The Life of Chuck," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Neon
LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- The Life of Chuck, in theaters Friday, is a surreal and beautiful portrait of a life well lived.
The film, adapted by Mike Flanagan from the Stephen King novella, portrays the life of Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in three chapters in reverse order. Near the end of his life, Charles appears on billboards that read "39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck."
Schoolteacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sees those ads and wonders who Charles is and what happened in those 39 years. The ads escalate before Charles actually appears; not since Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia has a movie character made such a grand entrance.
For a while, Charles becomes a mysterious figure in a world in crisis. But the film focuses on how regular people cope with their limited knowledge of world events.
Marty's ex-wife, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) is a nurse trying to hold a hospital down and reaches out to reconnect with her ex-husband. Marty also makes friends with a stranger, Sam Yabrough (Carl Lumbly), walking from place to place.
What people talk about during political and environmental upheaval is poignant. They wonder whether the chaos has led to more marriages or divorces, because they're considering if more people pursue love or give up on commitments. Other people are just too dazed to have a deep conversation.
Earlier in Charles' life, on a lunch break on a business trip, he stopped for street drummer Taylor Frank (The Pocket Queen) and started dancing. Though the choreography is enhanced by dance legend Mandy Moore, the scene represents a sincere moment between strangers.
The pair are both doing what comes naturally and they happen to complement each other. They need not speak for Taylor to guide Charles, or for Charles to inspire a new beat.
As a child, young Charles (Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay) goes to live with his grandparents (Mark Hamill, Mia Sara) after his parents die in an automobile accident. As an adult, he's already thought about his grandmother dancing in the kitchen, giving context in this segment.
By sixth grade, Charles is old enough to start asking questions. He's experienced the fragility of mortality earlier than most and is inevitably going to experience more before his own. He is living with an elderly couple, and even if he wasn't, death touches all of our lives.
There are several motifs that recur in each chapter: Dancing, the cosmic calendar representing all of existence as if it were months of the year, Walt Whitman poems and a locked room upstairs all appear in some way.
These give specificity to patterns that recur at various stages of life. Some of Charles' adult motivations are explained in childhood, but other feelings are not impacted so linearly.
There is a supernatural element to the story, but it is subtle and does not overshadow the film's celebration of real life. The mysterious aspect is unveiled at the end, more as a garnish to the human story than a twist ending.
Although Charles' life has specific circumstances, they are universal enough that the film serves as a Rorschach test for any viewer. Different aspects of The Life of Chuck will resonate with different people, and the film potentially gives peace and healing, if not definitive answers.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
