The universe is ending, but, more importantly: Who’s Chuck?

THE LIFE OF CHUCK
Rated M, 110 minutes
Reviewed by SANDRA HALL
★★★½

Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation begins at the end. When the film opens, Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) has died from a brain tumour at the age of 39 and the universe is about to expire with him.

Wildfires, floods and earthquakes are rife and a large chunk of north California has just crumbled into the Pacific, but don’t imagine that Flanagan and King are about to deliver a dystopian spectacle on a billion-dollar scale. These disasters occur off screen. Even the sinkhole that has stopped traffic in the suburban neighbourhood where the film is set goes unseen. We know about it because of the stream of people walking home after abandoning their cars.

The script is downplaying the panic to concentrate on the philosophical. We’re getting an intimate and contemplative look at the death of the universe in the company of a remarkably poised and resigned group of people. Felicia (Karen Gillan) an emergency nurse at the local hospital, has cut short her shift because the patients have gone home to be with those closest to them and she’s following suit.

Because she can’t think of anyone she would rather see, she rings Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), her ex-husband, and they settle into deckchairs in her garden to bear witness as the lights go out and the stars pop and fade.

The film is split into three acts and this one finishes with a key question unanswered. There are billboards all over town thanking someone called Chuck for 39 great years. Chuck? Who’s Chuck? No one seems to know.

Act Two brings the answer, homing in on Chuck with a vignette portraying him at his happiest. A seemingly sober-sided man in a business suit, he is strolling along the street, carrying a briefcase when a busking drummer strikes a rhythm she hopes will attract his attention.

To her astonishment, he stops, stares, puts down his briefcase and launches into an inspired dance routine. He’s soon joined by another passer-by – a woman, Janice Halliday (Annalise Basso), who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend – and a crowd gathers, staying long enough to give them a heartfelt ovation. You don’t have to be an Astaire, Kelly or Bob Fosse fan to see the sequence as an expression of unadulterated joy.

Act One rounds out the film’s strangely hiccupping structure with the rest of Chuck’s story, beginning in his childhood, explaining his passion for dance and introducing a supernatural touch with a ghost story. There’s also an implicit comment on the poignancy of time’s passing in the casting of Mark Hamill - alias Luke Skywalker - as Chuck’s hard-drinking old grandfather.

By now, we finally understand where the film is going. Chuck is Everyman and his life story is meant to encapsulate the film’s upbeat theme. One of young Chuck’s teachers helpfully spells it out with a line from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “I am large. I contain multitudes.”

In other words, humankind may be about to become extinct but our individual lives, no matter how short or long, have produced beings filled with an extraordinary amount of knowledge, emotion and experience.

It’s a nice thought but seems scant consolation for the end of everything. If humanity’s great memory bank is vanishing with the stars, what’s the point of having it? Maybe it’s going to be reincarnated somewhere else. Who knows? The film doesn’t go that far with its prognostications. Nonetheless, I have to admit the memory of Chuck’s dancing feet counts for a lot.

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