In the hypothetic scenario that the totality of Stephen King’s works was represented by a huge hotel nestled in the mountains, Mike Flanagan would be quite at ease carrying out the responsibilities of the hotel’s. Or is he one all along? Before the writer-director attempted to take on the literary works of the author, his works appeared to be in homage of the great ‘King’, even taken over by him; consider the time-hopping structure of Oculu’s and the Haunting of Hill House mini series. After telling those rather Kingish stories of terror, which lies deep inside of every cinema lover in a country, Mr Flanagan has made it official, with a great honor joining the ranks of Mr Reiner, Mr Darabont, Mr Garris and others, who have filmed several King’s stories. What is more, he has even bravely risen to the apparent impossibility of bringing quite dissimilar tales to the screen – in his film adaptation of Gerald’s Game (which was thought to be unfilmable), in Doctor Sleep, which simultaneously acted as a sequel to both versions of The Shining, and now in this utterly loyal adaptation of King’s very structurally ambitious novella The Life of Chuck.
There is no trace of the spectres or ghouls that sometimes accompany the source material – in this case a little more than a 100 page story –taken from the 2020 collection If It Bleeds. Therefore this is the author at his most metaphysical mushy – Uncle Steve the stoned philosopher, evoking visions of galaxies on blades of grass, only to make use of light metaphysical elements to celebrate the confounding wonders of existence. Flanagan does not compromise all the meditative attributes of that language, he does not alter its peculiar structure: three acts, executed in a reverse succession, starting with the apparent end of the known universe.
The writer implements some alienation when inducing empathy into the characters’ perspectives. Not quite, Stephen King terrorizing her and Chillingworth – not for collegiate exam all and some koan particular less peak functioning considers altogether resembles a help’s leave eye tearing over. Of the three segments, this is the most, frankly speaking, interesting, if not more than interesting. Reuniting hours before the apocalyptic event with the heads of the opposition are Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan. There’s this really cathartic apocalypse that everyone loves in movies where people aren’t screaming and running around or trying to escape, but instead have this weird morbid fascination with exploring the nearly abandoned city and witnessing the epic disassembly of civilization. (Let me put it this way, it’s at the phase of denial explained by Matthew Lillard in a brief affecting cameo, they are in the acceptance phase of the collective grieving of the family). The progression seems like one of those impossible places of immense super supersMember that it sounds quite wonderful, and so it probably would.
When the darkness devours humanity, there is an intense advertisement (or, as Ejiofor’s baffled school teacher calls it, “the last meme”) where the remaining representatives are welcomed into the graphic advertisements and TV and print ads, which boast of “more than 39 ever great years on the job of an accountant, Charles “Chuck” Krantz,” played by Tom Hiddleston” Who on earth is this Chuck and what kind of retirement is he talking about? They will never get to know that, but we do, because Flanagan next takes a daily interlude from the eponymous life of Chuck, which is this time devoted to narration rather than action, and centers upon the disturbed Brian, and his syncopated career break which involves a random ‘couple’ and framed slaps involving a busker daddy all over the bloody. Although no one says it precisely, dance like no one’s watching is precisely the instruction that this spontaneous cornball performance, an exhortation from a boomer writer who does not refrain from infecting his dialogue and epigraphs with his classic rockism’s overbearing temperament, is counterclockwise.
ACT 3, the most protracted of the bunch, visits King within Hearts of Atlantis territory again, in particular, by returning to Chuck’s younger years, with Hiddleston gradually passing the lead role on to the children; Benjamin Pajak, Cody Flanagan and Jacob Tremblay. Thus the child manages to process and endure some early traumas, through the passion of dancing, coupled with the presence of a few other wise figures (notably Mark Hamill, who plays his grandfather, who has overbearing wisdom, but in actuality has a mystery hidden in the attic which is the closest The Life of Chuck comes to conventional King horror). For all his attempts to look out through the bowels of fantasy, for all the distractions of genre, the author is a softy and here for love. Let’s not mince words and tell you that Tremblay got off the hook easier than he ever got in Flanagan’s previous King’s gender enjoyment adaptation, in which a pack of vampires funneled Tremblay as if he were a cool vaporizer.
There, the profundity which The Life of Chuck so evidently strives for and which is a very logical expectation will depend on individual mileage: If that old chestnut about the destination being not the end butt rather a journey still lands for you, expect to beam/weep as intended. With respect to the general concepts, it is less the story that is told, rather how it is told that constitutes the problems with the film. It is rare to find a filmmaker so enthralled with an original work as to risk leaving any part of it out. In leading the pope to make the Brutus attack, he utilizes large portions of the text of King in Sepulchral doze. He makes Nick Offerman read some of the powerful lines of the King while applying almost incomparable footage to such an extent that it starts becoming a literary motion picture. Unfortunately, the actors are also burdened with the never-ending tirade of anecdotes and lessons sharing (Flanagan has a cast which is not short of a spine, thank goodness), and a cheap sentimentality, which, in every sound of a piano’s tinkling attempts to solicit, begs your tears, your amazement, your beauty.
All for Auntie’s as well as Koja Goes to Paris in the Untitled Rob Meyer Project are both domestic dramas. In Wee’s uncle’s fight with the backouts that characterize dependence. It follows from the very design of this work and is rightly stressed at the beginning, that this is a group project. This then gave rise to the evident collaborative nature in the beginning that she personally denies towards the end. The Way We Get By is as much an investigation of the power of the American presidency as it is a portrait of its citizens kangaroo court system.
And while we will smile knowingly and walk past the question of whether or not Stanley Kubrick improved The Shinning, even Flanagan knew when to pull a few bits from its much debated premise sequel. Devotion, he’s been mostly about fidelity. Which is why it is quite difficult to escape the impression that it is rather a person lacking such high respect who would drag The Life of Chuck to the screen instead of just copying it. Or perhaps it was simply that any such more a feel good film than a $40 million film adaptation of such an pugilistic fight was always going to wear like Charlie Kaufman Makes Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Verdict
Though there’s no room for any doubts as to who’s the world’s biggest Stephen King adaptations fan and anthropologist turned film director of Stephen King adaptations, Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan returns with the book with the unfriendly spine ready for the next installment – deduction by the reverse chronology telling of a less terrifying for the author bock: a gaudy metaphysical parable about life, death, the world’s end, and dancing without shame. You can appreciate The Life of Chuck’s scope from a distance, but not really wonder whether such a thinly intellectual tale as that should be told, least of all the screen – or whether turning every single sentence into a Nick Offerman tort interference was particularly sensible. It is eventually not so much an adaptation as a fancy tape recording of the N. Stroganov’s oral work by some King faithful devotee.
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