The Life of Chuck ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- Jul 11
- 5 min read
Availability: Still showing widely in theaters nationally and internationally. Streaming expected in late Fall on Hulu, based on other Neon releases. For full streaming and purchase options, see JustWatch here.
Leave the Door Open
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” One can imagine that sentiment splashed across a lobby poster for Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck,” based on a Stephen King story by the same name. But they are the words of Søren Kierkegaard, the 19th-century Danish philosopher, known for exploring the existential. Consisting of 3 Acts or chapters, the film opens (Act Three) at the “end”—two endings, really. One ending is announced enigmatically, with signs on billboards and benches and television commercials displaying the visage of accountant Charles “Chuck” Krantz and proclaiming “Thanks, Chuck” (the title of the act) and “Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years.”
Tom Hiddleston is perfect as the serene and earnest accountant Charles Krantz, who mysteriously appears on billboards, TV ads, and in house windows.
The other ending is more obvious and more “cosmic” in every sense of the word; Act Three concludes with high school teacher Marty Anderson (Oscar-nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor), our surrogate, seated in the darkness of his ex-wife Felicia’s backyard, watching the cosmos crackle and explode, and Marty, understanding the moment, turning to Felicia and saying, “I love….” Now we know why life can only be understood backwards.
Now we know why life can only be understood backwards.
The words that follow Kierkegaard’s famous sentence are curiously prophetic: “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” The second segment, Act Two, “Buskers Forever,” opens with Chuck (Tom Hiddelston), approaching 39 (the age made famous by comedian Jack Benny), taking a break from a conference of fellow accountants he’d rather avoid by relaxing outside. As Chuck strolls, the camera focuses on his shoes and the narrator describes them (not the only time shoes will figure prominently). Chuck stops in front of a busker drummer (Taylor Gordon) laying down a beat.
Hiddleston, known as nemesis Loki in the Marvel franchise and as a Shakespearean actor, is magical, bringing to the moment a sense of transformation, of epiphany.
In one of the most heart-warming dance sequences in cinema, Chuck sets down his briefcase and begins to move, then dance. From the growing crowd, he pulls a reluctant, red-headed partner he sees feeling the beat (Annalise Basso), and the two of them, well, get it on, daring to lose their footing. Though Hiddleston doesn’t have the sex appeal of John Travolta (indeed, sexual attraction is missing from the film) or the grace of Fred Astaire, the scene is enchanting. As Alissa Wilkinson observed in her recent New York Times review of “Jurassic World Rebirth,” cinema at its best can produce a sense of awe, of wonder—and that’s what happens here. Hiddleston, known as nemesis Loki in the Marvel franchise and as a Shakespearean actor, is magical, bringing to the moment a sense of transformation, of epiphany, even though—or maybe because—he doesn’t know why. The dance is also punctuated, briefly and prophetically, by Chuck’s recurring headache. Like prevaricating Benny on his TV birthdays, he’ll never see 40, but he knows he has to dance. Life must be lived forwards.
Chuck at 12 (an engaging and talented Benjamin Pajak) is close to a foot shorter
than his 8th-grade dancing partner (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), but, having learned
from his grandma, he can strut his stuff with the best of them.
Kierkegaard was a Lutheran, and his answer to the inevitability of death (if not to the absurdity of life) was essentially Christian. The “leap of faith” is the phrase with which he is associated, referring not only to a belief in Jesus, but to the need to suspend self-reflection in order to act. As we’ll learn in Act One (the last act in the film), which chronologically narrates Chuck’s childhood, religion is not a factor in his approach to life. Living with his grandparents after the death of his parents, 7-year-old Chuck finds his rather young and hip grandmother, Sarah (his bubbie, Mia Sara), doing a bit of busking herself, tapping a spoon on a kitchen pot and swaying her hips. When she beckons to Chuck with a hand, and he accepts, his life as a dancer is launched.
Chuck teaches the students, and the teacher, the moonwalk.
A third dance scene, with 11-year-old Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) strutting his stuff in a prom-like setting with an 8th-grade Asian student who is a foot taller, doesn’t quite reach the level of the Act Two spectacle, but it’s a satisfying and emotional moment—and there’s another aside to shoes. In a dance class, Chuck teaches the students, and the teacher, the moonwalk (the movement was first performed publicly by Michael Jackson in March 1983, establishing a rough timeline for the story).
Chuck's (the 7-year-old Cody Flanagan) paternal grandparents,
Sarah (Mia Sara) and Albie (Mark Hamill) are suddenly thrust into the role of
surrogate parents after Chuck's parents die in a car accident.
Act One also features Flanagan’s (who faithfully adapted the King story) effort to expand on its philosophical underpinnings—that is, to explain why Chuck has to dance, and who he is. Middle-school student Chuck asks his English teacher to explain the meaning of the phrase “I contain multitudes,” from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” Miss Richards’ (Kate Siegel) explanation seems to suggest some notion of the individual as universal, with Chuck embodying humanity’s multitudes, past and present. Chuck is all of us.
Miss Richards (Kate Siegel), Chuck's English teacher, explains Walt Whitman's line, "I contain multitudes," adding to the existential dimension of the film.
A different perspective emerges from an overly long scene in which Chuck’s old, besotted, and preachy grandfather, Albie (his zaydee, Mark Hamill), seeks to steer Chuck into accounting rather than dance, arguing that mathematics is the key to just about everything. Yet he also appreciates that Chuck is, if not unique, then special; he has heart (and, we might add, free will and charisma). Chuck is Chuck, and we all—the multitudes—need Chuck.
The dance scenes are wondrous.
“The Life of Chuck” is carefully, perhaps too carefully, plotted and arranged (those 3 acts in reverse order, the voice-over narration), that is, overly contrived. In pursuit of profundity, it unleashes a quartet of didactic characters—Anderson, Miss Richards, an elderly mortician and, especially, Albie Krantz, who do their best, sometimes at excessive length, to clarify the meaning of life. It’s also (maybe as a result) complex, challenging and, above all, delightful, and even, at times, inspiring. The dance scenes are wondrous. Flanagan and Pajak (especially) are charming as the younger Chuck. Hiddleston projects a serene earnestness that suits the role.
Above, Mark Hamill as Grandpa Albie, who has secrets
to keep from, and lessons to teach, his young grandson.
Grandfather Albie inhabits a Victorian house, with a cupola that contains frightening memories, and whose door has been padlocked for years. When 17-year-old Chuck (Jacob Tremblay) inherits the house on Albie’s death and unlocks that door, he, too, will see something unsettling. But he’s Chuck. He’ll keep the door open.
He says: Thanks, Chuck.
She says: Magically, the 4K restoration of the 1996 Japanese award-winner “Shall We Dance” is in theaters now too.
Date: 2025
Director: Mike Flanagan
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Benjamin Pajak, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mia Sara, Mark Hamill, Cody Flanagan, Jacob Tremblay, Kate Siegel, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss
Runtime: 115 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Other Awards: 1 win (Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award) and 4 other nominations to date
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