Briefly Reviewed – Mike Flanagan’s ‘The Life of Chuck’

What is a universe? This is the thing this extraordinarily beautiful film makes you think about: not “what is the universe”, but “what is a universe”! We all know what The Universe™ is. It is that vast entity made of fiery suns and dark moons and the sandy symmetry of Saturn’s rings. But The Life of Chuck is after something more contained, and also something more profound. By meeting people, we invite them to become part of our universe, and we become part of theirs. Some of these people may loom as large as Jupiter. Others may be a speck of space dust. But they’re all part of who we are, who we grow to be over our life, which is our gift of time on this planet. And when we die (or when they die), this connection snaps. And thus, Mike Flanagan’s film (based on a Stephen King short story) begins with what looks to be the destruction of a planet, something like one of those end-of-the-world movies Hollywood loved to make. Only, we slowly realise that this is the end of a universe. (Is this a spoiler? Fuck it! My blog, my rules.)

I was told this was a musical. It isn’t. There are two lovely musical sequences, but – again – those are a part of Chuck’s universe. There’s this joke that it would be lovely if life unfolded in reverse: we begin with death and work our way back to middle-age and youth and robust childhood and end with the one magnificent orgasm that started it all. The Life of Chuck is that joke in movie form. I was moved beyond words. I ran to the theatre because it was the last day this film was playing in the city, and found that a few of our younger filmmakers had done the same thing. I was sitting next to one of them. After the movie, I asked him the question I hate to be asked after a movie: “So… what did you think?” He smiled and said what I would have said: “I am still processing it.” A few days later, I am still processing The Life of Chuck: not in terms of form (though, as always in this filmmaker’s work, there are visual compositions and sound decisions that are to die for), but in terms of the larger implications of this story. John Donne wrote: No man is an island, / Entire of itself; / Every man is a piece of the continent, / A part of the main. Apparently, we are a part of the universe, too. Here’s to the Chucks whose universes we are a part of, and the Chucks who are a part of ours.