The Life of Chuck: Mike Flanagan’s masterpiece [critique]

Mike Flanagan abandons horror to sign his most moving film. A reflection on ordinary life which turns out to be extraordinary, carried by a unrecognizable Tom Hiddleston.

Chuck Krantz dances on an American suburban sidewalk. Around him, the world crumbles – California has no electricity, the roads crack, the Internet makes the soul. But Chuck dance, and suddenly everything lights up. Here is Mike Flanagan : Transform the apocalypse into epiphany, make despair a springboard towards grace.

With Life of Chuckthe master of contemporary horror (Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep) Operates a radical turn which is not really one. Because behind the Jumpscares of his previous films was already hiding this obsession: how to survive the conscience of our death? Stephen King had explored this theme by writing this news a few years ago, Flanagan translated it on the screen.

The film plays cards on the table as soon as it is opened. Mystical, strange, fantastic, it is structured in three acts, in reverse chronological order, which will only make sense at the end.
Act one: Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a teacher, waits imperturbable to the end of the world probably nearby. He notices on TV or on the buildings of advertisements featuring a mysterious chuck … Who is it? And what relationship with the apocalypse that is playing there?
Act two: a few months earlier, the chuck in question, a very serious accountant, begins to dance in the street. A young unknown decides to join him …
Act three: Chuck is a child. He lives with his grandparents. Her depressive grandmother finds joy by dancing, a passion she will transmit to her grandson … But what hides the strange piece of the attic? And why is his grandfather so obsessed with math?
We will not reveal more. It will be enough to say that Tom Hiddleston embodies this chuck with an overwhelming accuracy – far from the facetious Loki, he confirms that he also knows how to be an actor of crazy delicacy. His improvised dance sequence, filmed like a daily miracle, competes with the most beautiful moments of LA LA LAND. But if Hiddleston is magnetic, we know that Flanagan perfectly masters the art of the casting choral. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan perfectly camp a divorced couple who find themselves faced with the collapse, Mark Hamill Surprising in New York Jewish patriarch, and each appearance of the director’s faithful (Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli) sounds right, this family of cinema that he has been built for years finding an ideal setting here.

But it is in its staging that Flanagan strikes the strongest. Each plan breathes light melancholy, each fitting weaves a canvas of striking temporal echoes. The photography of Eben Bolter caresses as much as she worries, the Brothers Newton sign a score that takes the guts. And the director films nostalgia with a visceral emergency. Because The Life of Chuck Talk about passing time and memories that haunt us. Flanagan could have fallen into sentimentality, he avoids the trap thanks to a clever narrative construction and disarming sincerity. When Chuck Child discovers musicals with his grandmother, we feel the easy emotion. And this quote from Whitman – “I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am vast, I contain multitudes” – which had left us prohibited suddenly its meaning.

Basically, if the film is so powerful, it is that Flanagan fully assumes its bias: yes, each ordinary life conceals a whole universe. Yes, our most banal lives deserve that we dwell on it. And no, it is not counter philosophy but a glaring truth that our cynical era has forgotten a little.