With his saga The Haunting and his Fall of the House of Usher, Mike Flanagan has forged a reputation as a solid craftsman of television horror. Since 2018, the creator and director has been gracing Netflix with captivating productions, or at least sincere and touching enough to be unmissable. It was always a question of telling the story of death, through the eyes of those who are still living.
Ghosts that shake up already shaky heroes, intangible figures that embody past traumas that must be let go of (or not). In many ways, his imagination was reminiscent of Stephen King's, in the way he brings humanity to the fantastic.
It was only a matter of time before Flanagan took a story by the American author and transposed it onto the small or big screen. He'll do both. While waiting for his series Carrie for Prime Video, the director is taking on a much less illustrious and... frightening short story. We didn't really expect it there.
“Thanks Chuck!”
Summarizing Life of Chuck is probably as difficult as summarizing life itself. To avoid spoiling the surprise, we'll simply say that the story is divided into three distinct parts, evolving around its hero at different stages of his life.
The opening follows a certain Marty Anderson, a high school teacher who sees the world heading towards its ruin. For several months, the internet has been playing up and numerous natural disasters are making the Earth an increasingly hostile place. In the midst of this chaos, Marty discovers a billboard that thanks a certain Chuck. But who is he?
Birth, death... and everything in between. From its very first moments, Mike Flanagan's film sets the scene for his profoundly human reflection. With The Haunting and The Midnight Club, Flanagan proved he was capable of both drama and comedy. The human stakes were the driving force of his story, and that's precisely where his horror found its strength. Far from ghosts, does the director manage to seduce in the same way?
Yes, and for many reasons. First, Flanagan knows how to take advantage of the story structure that inspired him. The three chapters allow the filmmaker to play with his audience's expectations and offer a multifaceted film. Initially an intriguing disaster story, reminiscent of Black Mirror, the film evolves into an enchanting and sung tale about the beauty of encounters and chance before ending with a more metaphysical reflection on destiny. The opening is particularly successful in that it summons seemingly hackneyed mechanics to better reinvent them. The imminence of a major catastrophe becomes the playground for an exploration of human relationships and questions about fate. It also depicts a slow and gentle death of our blue planet.
Here, the heroes don't flee the region in a huge pickup truck, avoiding asteroids and fireballs; we are shown helpless caregivers when their colleagues pack up and leave, teachers helpless when their students give up; in short, a humanity in search of meaning when there is only one direction to take: the one that will lead us to the end.
Far from being an accessory, this introduction strikes with its meticulous writing. The performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillian are no strangers to this success; they effortlessly bring the dramatic stakes to life and, in just a few minutes, bring tears to our eyes.
Death after life
Once this introduction is over, the film focuses on connecting the important moments in Chuck's life, multiplying the reminiscences of the past and the future. The film skillfully juggles these characters and timescales to establish itself as a sensitive and magical chronicle. From a timeless moment with Tom Hiddleston to fascinating conversations between Mark Hamill and the endearing Benjamin Pajak, Life of Chuck isn't afraid to spread itself thin to better return to the heart of its subject: life, the one we haven't yet lived, the one we'll never have the opportunity to live, and above all, the one we savor.
While the film sometimes indulges in sentimentality and melodrama, it appears as a necessary catharsis. The voice of Nick Offerman (The Last of Us), cheerful and out of step with the events, allows this story to not sink too much into its desire to make people cry in the cottages, to counterbalance the solemnity of certain moments. The music of The Newton Brothers succeeds particularly well in framing these more or less moving sequences, to give the dialogues a new resonance. While the two brothers' score isn't the most inspired, it also stands out as comforting in an ocean of thunderous proposals.
While immortality remains a goal for humanity, Life of Chuck reminds us that a story is never as beautiful as when it has an ending, however bittersweet it may be. This is also somewhat the case here, when, in its final moments, the film lifts the last mystery that hovered over this singular story.
We are a little disappointed, we would undoubtedly have preferred that the film leave it to the spectators to imagine the rest, but we leave the darkness of a cinema with the pleasant sensation of having lived through Chuck. We have explored his world and for that, we say to him “Thank you Chuck, for these 111 wonderful minutes”.
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