The Life of Chuck has earned its rightful spot as winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s 2024 People’s Choice Award, offering a reflective perspective on what it means to live life to the fullest.
This review contains spoilers for the film The Life of Chuck.
Filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s genre-bending adaptation of Stephen King’s novella of the same name is both uplifting and poignant. Best known for his bone-chilling work (Oculus, The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep), it’s not a surprise that this movie contained elements of horror, yet still managed to maintain a resounding feeling of optimism.
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Split into three acts, and narrated by Nick Offerman, the story is unorthodoxly told in reverse chronological order.
Beginning with Act Three, titled “Thanks Chuck,” we see the entire planet on the verge of collapse. There is a worldwide environmental crisis and the earth is burning. California has faced a massive earthquake that has left the majority of the state in ruins and underwater. Volcanoes have erupted in Germany. China is facing a disastrous famine. It’s the end of times, and the light is dimming on humanity.
Despite the dreadful circumstances, school teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor)
attempts to hold conferences with parents, all of whom are uninvested in their childrens’ student affairs and instead devastated that the internet has completely shut down. Just the mere thought of the extinction of PornHub is enough to move one parent to tears.
The sounds and projections of catastrophe are soon drowned out by vague billboard, radio, and television ads, all thanking some guy named Charles Krantz – A.K.A. Chuck – for 39 great years. Thirty-nine great years of what? What are we thankful for? WHO is he? Unfortunately, no one knows and the film makes no effort to disclose this key information too prematurely.
The height of the devastation brings Marty and his ex-wife Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), a nurse overseeing so many deaths that her team has nicknamed itself “The Suicide Squad,” closer than they ever had been in marriage. Watching the world implode around them, the pair rely on each other for comfort in the final hours of doomsday.
The city has gone completely dark. The moon, Mars, followed by all of the stars in the solar system quickly begin to vanish one-by-one. There’s a feeling of hopelessness in the atmosphere. The only glimmer of light are projections of Chuck, donning a thin smile, onto the windows of homes in the neighbourhood.
As life as we know it comes crashing down and the two await their undetermined fate, Marty is about to tell Felicia he loves her one last time just before the screen suddenly cuts to black.
The abrupt end of the first act leaves the viewer bewildered with more questions than answers, including one blaring query: who the heck is Chuck?!
Act Two, entitled “Buskers Forever,” opens to a brighter scene in the midst of a bustling outdoor shopping centre.
We’re introduced to Taylor Frank (Taylor Gordon), a Juilliard drop-out and extremely talented busking drummer, Janice Halliday (Annalise Basso), a woman that happens to be on the receiving end of a recent break-up, and finally, we meet Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), a white-collar accountant on a business trip casually passing through the plaza.
The beat of Taylor’s punchy drumming strikes the seemingly straightforward Chuck, prompting him to stop, set down his briefcase, and treat the audience to a surprisingly remarkable seven-minute dance break. The evidently gifted Chuck reels in Janice, and the pair put on an extraordinarily upbeat performance for the surrounding crowd worthy of an encore.
The trio, brought together at random by the liberating joy of music and dance, part their separate ways forever. Their chance encounter is a heartfelt reminder that some of life’s greatest moments can appear from the most unexpected places.
It’s revealed that Chuck is suffering from a terminal illness and has less than one year left to live, but he doesn’t know it yet. All he knows is that this one ordinary day was perhaps one of the best days of his life.
Act One, titled “I Contain Multitudes,” is the longest of the three and finally gives the audience a full explanation for their burning questions.
Chuck was orphaned at the age of seven following a tragic car accident that claimed the life of his parents and unborn sister.
He’s raised by his loving grandparents, Albie and Sarah Krantz (Mark Hamill and Mia Sarah) – affectionately dubbed Zayde and Bubbe. While his grandfather contained all the discernable traits of a bookkeeper – orderly and slightly rigid – his grandmother on the other hand was full of life, a traditional stay-at-home wife that secretly loved rock-and-roll music.
Sarah taught Chuck everything about dancing, in which he proved to be a natural. From busting moves together in the kitchen to watching classic musicals, he was well equipped to eventually join the school dance club and become the most gifted among the other students.
Albie, however, brings Chuck back to reality, reminding him that he’d be better off pursuing a more practical profession instead.
“The world loves dancers, but it needs accountants,” he explained to Chuck.
In school, Chuck seeks understanding in Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem “Songs of Myself,” particularly interested in the meaning of the line “I am large, I contain multitudes.” His teacher, Miss Richards (Kate Siegal) powerfully broadens his view, defining the complexities of the world and everything he knows within it as a part of him that he’s in divine control of.
The staggered tale begins to fall in place with this clarity; the planet is crumbling metaphorically because the world as Chuck knows it is fading in reality. As the title of the film suggests, we’re experiencing his universe, as he’s in the process of dying after living for 39 great years.
The Life of Chuck is a sentimental story of life rather than death. It profoundly explores the emotional depth of the human experience through love, friendship, family, loss, and grief. By the end, the viewer can’t help but be enthralled by the eponymous Chuck, whom at first we did not know, but will now mourn.
The film’s initially perplexing storytelling is rewarding to those who are patient and invested in taking time to unravel the multiple layers of Chuck. His awe-inspiring story serves as a reminder to be appreciative of the little things in this fleeting life and to dance like nobody’s watching.
The Life of Chuck initially premiered at TIFF on Sept. 6, but it’s uncertain when it will be released in theatres.
