Jean-Luc Godard once said, “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” Stephen King took that to heart when he wrote his novella, “The Life of Chuck.” Beginning at the end and ending at the beginning, he wove a tale of an ordinary man, much like you or me, whose life is intertwined with all around him. Director/adapter Mike Flanagan has done a masterful job of bringing this tale to the screen.
Act 3, the beginning of the story, is the end; the end of many things. Marty Anderson is an English teacher with the unenviable task of instructing his students in poetry, specifically Walt Whitman and his “Song of Myself.” He recites a stanza.
“The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! What have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening [I savor the transition to evening],
Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.”
But the class is distracted by bigger issues. They cling to their cellphones as news of cataclysmic disasters is announced over the internet. Most of California has fallen into the sea; the Midwest is being inundated by floods; a volcano has erupted in Germany. What is the point of Whitman when the world is crumbling?
Time passes, school continues but the signs of the impending apocalypse are everywhere. No more internet; TV blacks out; electricity is intermittent; cellphone service begins to fade. People separate; people reconnect. The one constant is the banners and signs thanking Chuck Krantz for his 39 years. They are everywhere; they are inescapable. Who, Anderson wonders, is Chuck Krantz? He discusses it with his neighbor, with strangers on the street. Who is this ordinary-looking man? No one knows.
Wandering the streets, littered with cars mired in a permanent traffic jam, Anderson encounters an old man sitting on a bench contemplating all around him. An undertaker, business has never been better, Sam Yarborough is calm and willingly shares his philosophy. What is happening is more than the result of climate change and man’s inhumanity to nature. It’s something greater; something harkening to end of times; an inevitability that has been long in coming. He is an oracle and this may be a Greek tragedy. He is the long-ignored but not unfulfilled. He had his dreams; he is all the beatitudes from the meek to the righteous to the merciful and pure of heart. But who is Chuck Krantz? Sam has no idea.
As if drawn by a magnet, Marty walks toward his ex-wife Felicia’s home. Long divorced, there is still a connection, and in times like these, one needs a connection. As he nears her home, the electricity fails, the lights go dark. But the ever-present signs of Chuck Krantz are now videos in every window. As Marty and Felicia cling to one another, there are two questions: What is happening and who is Chuck Krantz?
Forewarned is forearmed. Observe everything from the wallpaper on Marty’s walls, his explanation to Felicia of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmic Calendar” to “Song of Myself” taught in that first class because each will reappear again, as will other cosmic “coincidences.” Many who you will see at the end you will see again. The end relates to everything that came before it, even if, in this case, it will be everything that comes after.
In Act 2, the middle, we are introduced to Chuck, a man who has clearly made a life worth living even though there are storm clouds on the horizon. Act 1, the beginning told at the end, is, in a way, the origin story. Young Chuck, orphaned very young, is a curious soul blessed with grandparents who love and nurture him. His Bubbie teaches him to dance, something that translates later to his embrace of her love and memory. She loves him unconditionally. His adoring Zadie (grandfather) has but one rule. Chuck is not allowed in the locked room of the cupola. The locked room is Pandora’s Box and a very Kingian touch because it actually unlocks nothing and everything at the same time.
Middle school holds many mysteries, not the least of which is the lesson on “Song of Myself.” What, he asks his teacher, does “I am multitudes” mean? Lovingly she guides him to his own conclusions, conclusions that we, also, must come to terms with as we try to go forward again and unlock the mysteries presented to us.
“The Life of Chuck” is mystical and metaphorical. King takes us on a poetic journey of life and one that you will want to go on again; nay, need to go on again. I’ve traveled that path three times so far, and each time more was revealed to me. He asks so many questions and delivers few, if any, answers. How do you stay centered when there is no longer a center? And the key to everything is still in that Whitman poem. Is life itself a contradiction? What does “I contain multitudes” mean?
Mike Flanagan, a writer/director who has successfully adapted King novels in the past (“Doctor Sleep,” “Gerald’s Game”), has intersected the supernatural with the mundane and made it all come gloriously alive, both on the page and on the screen. He relied heavily on voice-over narration using a marvelously sonorous Nick Offerman to great effect. In most cases, and certainly in lesser hands, voice-over narration is an expositional crutch, used because the screenwriter doesn’t know how to translate words into visions. Film is a visual medium; prose is internal, making full use of the reader’s imagination. Here, however, reading whole passages of the beautifully written novella serves to underscore the actions you are seeing. Watch in Act 2 as Chuck is walking purposefully down the street, only his red socks and black shoes on view. Offerman’s narration intensifies your experience of Chuck’s steadfast march towards somewhere, but where? You’ll have to wait and see. Flanagan knows that we don’t need to see how or where he is going to appreciate the speed and poetry of his motion. The director succeeds in giving you the best of both worlds, leaving you enough internal imagination combined with the visual of Chuck’s red socks on an unknown mission, one that will soon be a detour that emphasizes a rhythm that has already been established.
The mood-setting score is by The Newton Brothers. Cinematographer Eben Bolter has created a visual world that is as much fanciful as it is real. The cinematography is breathtaking at times and purposefully mundane at others. But it is the actors that make everything come alive; they ground the film while also making it soar.
Carl Lumbly is Sam, the philosophical undertaker. He shines in his ability to explain both the universe and his understanding of life’s disappointments. Something he does with great effect in both Acts 3 and 1. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Marty, a British actor of stage and screen, imparts a range of emotions and intelligence with just the bat of an eye. His range is varied and the depth he brings to his characters, no matter how small, is amazing. The appearance of Mark Hamill as Albie Kranz, Chuck’s Zadie, is surprising and gratifying. Hard to imagine that Luke Skywalker is now playing grandfathers, but he is and he’s doing it warmly and convincingly. His Zadie is a linchpin to both the supernatural and the worldly of this story. He brings believability to his grandfatherly utterances, and additional meaning to his pet phrase, “Math doesn’t lie.”
Tom Hiddleston as Chuck is reason enough to see any film. All elegance and empathetic warmth, his very presence answers the question, “Who is Chuck?” His eyes sparkle, his gait is meaningful, there are no superfluous gestures. He has that speechless capability of giving meaning with his expressive eyes and loose-limbed presence.
See this film on the big screen. It is the embodiment of the whole being greater, far greater, than its parts. To quote those sages from Liverpool, “I am you and you are me and we are all together.” Some questions have no answers.
Opening June 6 at the AMC Century City 15 and the AMC Grove 14.
Neely Swanson spent most of her professional career in the television industry, almost all of it working for David E. Kelley. In her last full-time position as Executive Vice President of Development, she reviewed writer submissions and targeted content for adaptation. As she has often said, she did book reports for a living. For several years she was a freelance writer for “Written By,” the magazine of the WGA West, and was adjunct faculty at USC in the writing division of the School of Cinematic Arts. Neely has been writing film and television reviews for the “Easy Reader” for more than 10 years. Her past reviews can be read on Rotten Tomatoes where she is a tomatometer-approved critic.
