And so it came, the end.
It screamed at first, shrieking the wordless language of disaster. Hurricanes, fires, riots. Slice by slice, the coasts of California slid into the sea. Rage, terror, despair raced ahead, people frantic for safety, or solace, or something.
But as the disasters kept coming, Armageddon grew … quieter.
The internet wheezed and coughed its last. The epidemic of suicides slowed. People walked away from their jobs, dazed and oddly calm. Hospitals emptied. People sought out their loved ones, the hunger for connection growing strong. Sweet. Sad.
And as they tried to make sense of it all, one thing remained constant.
Charles Krantz.
His bespectacled face stared from the billboards, smiling. “39 Great Years,” the signs said. “Thanks, Chuck!”
He sat at his desk in the television ads, pen pressed to paper, fatigue seeping into his face.
Skywriters scrawled out Chuck’s salutations in smoke. Even graffiti trumpeted the achievements of Charles Krantz, the words, “Thanks, Chuck!” scrawled across concrete-block walls.
“Our man Krantz is the Oz of the apocalypse,” jokes funeral director Sam Yarbrough.
But who is this man behind the curtain? Who is … Chuck?
No one seems to know. Teacher Marty Anderson pokes around a bit, but his inquiries come up empty. It seems that everyone has more important things on their minds.
And so does Marty. If the world is in its final moments—and Marty still hopes it’s not—he wants to spend them with Janice, his ex-wife. He knows that now. With time nearly gone, each second feels like a treasure. And Marty knows how to spend those final seconds before the end.
[The following sections may contain spoilers.]
The Life of Chuck is all about death—and all about life.
That thematic paradox comes with drawbacks, as we’ll see. But in a press conference, Tom Hiddleston (who plays Chuck) nailed the film’s curiously buoyant hopefulness: The film honors, he says, “the magic in those small moments in our lives, which become the brightest stars in our memories.”
For Chuck, whom we officially meet in Act II, many of those bright stars revolve around dancing.
We learn that Chuck is an accountant, a devoted husband and a loving father. But his grandmother, who helped raise Chuck after his parents died in a car crash, instilled in him a love of dance. We see the two practice dance moves in the family kitchen when Chuck is just waist high. That love continues into middle school, when Chuck forsakes math club to join the school’s dance club. And then, even when he’s much older, Chuck discovers the talent to dance—and the joy of dance—continues to flow through his being. And that leads to an exuberant, impromptu performance with a couple of strangers during an accounting conference.
Dancing is not, necessarily, a positive in and of itself (and some readers might find it downright sinful). But in context, The Life of Chuck uses dance as a metaphor for life—a fleeting, joyful manifestation of breath and beat and precision and freedom.
But if his grandmother encourages dance (and all the life and vitality that comes with it), his grandfather pushes Chuck in a different direction: into math. And while the film could’ve easily presented these two dichotomies as a “good” thing and a “bad” thing—that for Chuck to abandon his dancing would be to abandon his dreams—the film doesn’t really do that. Chuck’s grandfather tells a young Chuck that math can also be beautiful. One can experience joy in numbers just as much as one can on the dance floor. Moreover, it can be a profound expression of truth: Math doesn’t lie, Chuck’s grandfather tells him. And it can even tell you things about the future. For instance, math can tell Chuck how difficult it is to make a living as a dancer.
Again, some viewers might take Grandfather’s advice as a dispiriting wet blanket, but the movie doesn’t really go there, in my opinion. Chuck does become an accountant—and a good one. He never expresses dissatisfaction with his career choice. And, of course, that love of dance didn’t disappear once he picked up his spreadsheets. We hear how he danced on stage throughout college, and he doesn’t lose a step when he hits middle age.
We learn through secondary sources that Chuck’s grandfather was a hero in his own accounting-like way—and deeply thoughtful of those around him. A man praises Grandfather’s abilities with the books, telling Chuck how often Grandfather saved his business.
Marty (the teacher we meet early in the movie) is likewise a man of principle and optimism. Even as the world falls apart around him, Marty continues to encourage his students to learn. He tries to exhort their parents, too; their kids still have a future, no matter how dire the world looks. When he’s asked whether more people are getting married or divorced in this apocalyptic age, Marty says without pause that marriage wins. People hunger for connection now, he argues, not separation.
We see that in Marty himself, as he makes his way to his ex-wife’s house. He longs to reconcile with her in what feel like the world’s last moments. She, it seems, wants to be with him, too. And as Marty makes the long walk across town to visit Janice, he takes the time to talk with others—not to talk about the weather, not to kvetch about the state of the world, but to find real, lasting connection. And that feels joyously ironic, given that it doesn’t seem like anything else will last much longer.
The Life of Chuck features a complex and sometimes conflicting sense of spirituality.
We learn about a third of the way through the movie that Chuck is dying from a brain tumor. We hear that Chuck is sometimes in unimaginable pain because of his tumor—so much so that he wonders why God created the world. But when he remembers his dance from just a few months ago, he knows exactly why God made the world.
We hear several other references to God, as well, and we see a young Chuck wear a kippah at funerals.
But on balance, the film’s spiritual ethos is more humanistic than deistic.
Chuck’s life is inextricably tied to the crumbling world we see at the outset: Marty’s world is, in fact, a manifestation of Chuck’s own fading life. And as the stars in Marty’s universe begin to wink out, one by one, we’re given no indication that Chuck is heading to any sort of afterlife.
In Christian thought, death is merely a semicolon in our story. Here, it feels like a period. Full stop. The film’s primary spiritual sage is the late Carl Sagan, seen on his beloved show, Cosmos, and quoted elsewhere. Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar is of special interest: It postulates that if you placed the timespan of the entire universe on a typical calendar—nearly 13.8 billion years, according to Sagan—all of recorded history could be squeezed into the last 10 seconds of Dec. 31.
The overarching message we’re given here is quite simple: Life is short and, well, pretty insignificant when you look at the overall picture. So embrace the time given to you.
And yet for all that Saganistic, scientific bent, the film gives us one powerful supernatural twist, too—one we won’t spoil here.
As Marty’s world collapses, the parent of one of his students mourns the fact that Pornhub vanished—chuckling under his breath that, given everything, that just seems cruel. (Marty sheepishly admits that he was aware of its disappearance.)
The Life of Chuck is based on a novella by Stephen King, and that snippet was included in the original work. But the movie’s director, Mike Flanagan, took that passage not as a prurient joke but as a clue that another part of Chuck is dying: His sexuality was “one of the many facets of him to disappear.”
As noted, Marty seeks out his ex-wife as his world appears to grind to a close. The most they do during their evening together, though, is hold hands.
As a kid in dance club, Chuck’s favorite dance partner is a girl about a foot taller than he is. The movie tells us that their relationship is strictly platonic—but they do dance with a certain allure, and their partnership makes the girl’s ex-boyfriend jealous. As a grown man, Chuck dances with a younger woman (who just broke up with her own boyfriend, whom, we’re to understand, wase on intimate terms with her). Their own dance moves can be, at times, tantalizing, but once again the film makes it clear that their relationship goes no farther—and that Chuck is utterly devoted to his wife.
A female dance instructor wears a man’s suit to a school dance. Some dresses show a teensy bit of cleavage. Characters hold hands. Chuck and his wife kiss.
As a child, Chuck cuts his hand on a chain-link fence. We see the bloody wound as it happens, and it leaves Chuck with a lifelong scar.
Chuck suffers a headache—a manifestation of the tumor inside his brain. Someone dies from a heart attack. We hear how Chuck’s parents died in a car accident. He suffers other losses as well. He’s pushed roughly down to the ground by someone.
Marty’s world is falling apart. And while much of what’s happening is inherently destructive, it’s not nearly as horrific for the viewer as it could be. We hear about an epidemic of suicides, and we see news footage of the world’s chaos. We learn a sinkhole opened in the middle of town, sending plenty of people (and cars) tumbling into it. (It’s assumed that many did not make it out alive.)
We hear about 13 f-words and five s-words. Other profanities include “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.” Jesus’ name is abused once. God’s name is also abused once, paired with “d–n.”
Chuck’s grandfather habitually drinks too much: After he divulges a big family secret to Chuck, his wife forces him to walk to the grocery store to sober up. And while the movie stresses that he’s a good, kindly man, he does shove his grandson out of a doorway while under the influence.
Two characters smoke a pipe.
We hear some intimations that the destruction of Marty’s world was due to environmental abuse.
“There’s no horror in the world without love.”
So Life of Chuck director Mike Flanagan paraphrased the story’s original author, Stephen King, as saying. And both King and Flanagan have a wealth of experience to know.
King has ladled out horror stories for more than 50 years, selling a staggering 350 million copies of his terrifying tomes. Flanagan—creator of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and one of pop culture’s most prominent purveyors of horror—has adapted his fair share of King’s work.
And while King’s and Flanagan’s collective works have caused plenty of collective nightmares, their stories aren’t solely about blood and bone: They’re about the human heart.
The Life of Chuck is no horror story. This is a dreamy, uplifting tale about finding life in the midst of death, uncovering joy in the teeth of tragedy. It reminds us that life is a gift, even if that gift is fleeting. And the people we meet in that life? They’re gifts, too.
The worlds of The Life of Chuck are, indeed, saturated in death and destruction—those things of horror. And yet, when we walk out of the theater, it’s the love we remember.
And yet.
Yes, The Life of Chuck is full of optimism, but it can feel, from a Christian perspective, that it forgets the biggest reason we have to be optimistic. Sure, it’s a joyous reminder to embrace the life we have—because it is, indeed, a fleeting thing. But it leaves out our understanding that something even greater lies beyond. Death is merely the prelude to a greater, more glorious story. Rather than the end, death is simply the beginning.
We must also navigate the movie’s R rating. Remove, oh, about a dozen unnecessary f-words, and The Life of Chuck would’ve sailed in with a PG-13 label, easy.
Those issues should not be overlooked, of course. But for those who might navigate its issues, The Life of Chuck reminds us to look at each other more than our phones. It tells us to seek connection rather than distraction. And most importantly, it encourages us to laugh. To live. To dance.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
