‘The Life of Chuck’: Mike Flanagan Adapts Stephen King’s Short Story Into a Wonderful Meditation on Life’s Chapters

Alci Rengifo

It must be quite something to near the end and look back. Does our brain truly turn our lives into a kind of montage that flashes by? In Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck,” a rather normal existence reveals some of its finer details as the body begins to shut down. Flanagan is adapting a short story by Stephen King, from the author’s 2020 collection “If It Bleeds.” Both artists are known for their work in horror, so it’s fitting the director changes gears with a story that also marks a departure from the author’s usual ghouls and nightmares. If there is fear in the material it is that of knowing we all have an appointment with staring into the void.

Flanagan sticks to the structure of King’s text, framing the movie as tableaux going backwards. For example, it begins with “Act Three” set in a quietly apocalyptic future. In a small American town the residents inform each other on dire reports that much of California has sunk into the sea. The internet is going out. School teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) looks helpless while trying to talk parents into keeping their kids in class. His ex-wife, Felicia (Karen Gillan), works at a local hospital where despair haunts everyone. Staying in touch is like a lifeline. Then there are the strange billboards all around town displaying a cheerful man in suit and glasses, Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), who a mysterious ad congratulates for “39 great years.” Why does his ad appear in the windows of homes as the light flickers, the stars threaten to burn out, and Marty and Felicia await the end? 

This is the initiating chapter in a very unconventional film. Leave expectations for easy plotting at the door. In terms of tone, this is a King adaptation closer to works like “Hearts in Atlantis” or “Lisey’s Story,” where the writer gets into an eloquently metaphysical style. The title of this film is actually quite literal. It is a journey through Chuck’s life. Read no further if you prefer to discover the film completely clean. “Act Three” turns out to be a kind of mental projection going on inside Chuck’s mind as he lies in a hospital bed, dying of cancer at the still young age of 39. Flanagan, through King’s writing, imagines what our brains’ inner chambers might put together as those final flickers of consciousness take place before we die. What connection does Marty have for Chuck? It doesn’t matter when you consider the way our subconscious processes all we absorb in life like data, playing with it however it wants when we sleep. The world ending is almost a mental expression of Chuck’s body falling apart, because his world is indeed collapsing.

Now we go backwards and “Act Two” takes place in the middle of Chuck’s story, as he at a fresh 39, dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, comes across a drumming busker at a promenade who feels inspired to play a particular rhythm when seeing Chuck walk. He spontaneously starts dancing, with a narration informing us that there was a time when he was in a rock band as a teenager who danced like Mick Jagger. A heartbroken young woman, Lauren (Annalise Basso), dances with Chuck in a moment of unrestrained freedom. Such are those brief, spontaneous memories of an impulsive move that ended up becoming something to cherish. In terms of plot, it reveals just a bit more about this man whose name graces the film’s title. Like a slide wheel, the life of Chuck passes before us in flashes. Was he ever famous or great? How many of us ever are?

“Act One” then combines the present of Chuck’s dying, with his teen son and wife Virginia (Q’orianka Kilcher) keeping watch over his hospital bed, with memories of his middle school years through high school years (played at various stages of youth by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay). We learn how Chuck lost his parents to a car accident and was raised by grandparents Albie (Mark Hamill) and Sarah (Mia Sara). Grandpa was a stern but loving accountant, grandma a housewife who loved rock music and got Chuck into dancing. Flanagan, who has filmed King’s brand of scares before in “Doctor Sleep” and “Gerald’s Game,” only teases at the eerier side of his literary muse with chatter about a secret in Albie and Sarah’s dark attic. He goes for a warmer, nostalgic touch in telling of Chuck’s love of dance and days at a school dance class where he feels the first stirrings of young love with a classmate. There’s even a prom scene. 

In recounting a life, the smaller details matter and “Life of Chuck” finds elegant ways to hint at how the boy became the man we saw earlier in a business suit. Albie, played with wonderful gruff by Mark Hamill, warns his grandson that math is the pathway to a stable financial future. The world always needs accountants while dancing is a risk. Chuck cannot know then he will only live to 39, leaving us to wonder if abandoning a passion is worth it. When you find yourself musing that way during the movie, you realize Flanagan’s approach works. Some may get turned off by the non-linear structure or the fact that there’s no payoff because the narrative is building towards what all of our lives are marching towards, meaning an eventual end we can’t predict. Yet, we do all live, undergoing our own microcosmic stories involving whatever we dedicate our days to. We love, we lose, we gain, and we have small bursts of dancing. Every performance feels right because they don’t need to overplay the roles. “The Life of Chuck” is easy to relate to, even with its cosmic moments, because we’re all undergoing his journey in our own ways.

“The Life of Chuck” releases June 6 in select theaters and expands June 13 in theaters nationwide.