The Life of Chuck will inspire you in ways few other Stephen King adaptations have in the past, just like it did for Tom Hiddleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor, they tell Yahoo UK.
Directed by Mike Flanagan, the movie centres on an ordinary man named Charles Krantz (Hiddleston) and three chapters in his life. Told out of order, the genre-bending narrative explores what it means to live and also what it means to die, but not in the way you might expect from a story by King.
For some, The Life of Chuck will be the first time they encounter King’s work, teaching them the meaning of life and the importance of holding those close to you. It was these life lessons that Hiddleston and Ejiofor took from it themselves, as the former shares: “I found it very moving when I read it and I think Mike has made a really beautiful film, and it speaks to me in the sense that it’s about the courage and the connection we need to the people we love.
Tom Hiddleston plays Charles “Chuck” Krantz in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck. (StudioCanal)
“When it feels as though the world is falling apart hold on to the people you love, to the people who matter, cherish your time together and share the joy, and the film seems to be acknowledging that life can be very hard at times and that we all encounter loss and grief, and struggle, and pain, and those things are real and inevitable and part of the experience of being alive. But alongside that, there are profound experiences of joy that actually become the stitching that makes life worth living.
“And when you roll up those moments, it becomes the sort of fabric that you can wear when times get hard. Joy is a transformative energy, actually, it’s not a passive experience. It’s something you’re communicating and you’re giving to other people, and it can catch, and it kind of keeps us together. So it’s a very life-affirming film in that way.”
The Life of Chuck as an entry into Stephen King
The Life of Chuck can inspire viewers to live life to the fullest with its ‘moving’ tale, Tom Hiddleston told Yahoo UK. (StudioCanal)
Stephen King is the master of horror, and many other genres besides, but while the author has had a near 50-year career there are those who will discover him for the first time through The Life of Chuck. It’s something the cast take great pride in.
“I was just thinking how fascinating an entry point this film would be for somebody, for a young person who’s not really been exposed to Stephen King,” Ejiofor, who plays teacher Marty, reflects. “It has so many different aspects of the King universe. I think the structure is such an interesting mystery and it’s so it’s entertaining but it’s philosophical, and just very rich in terms of how it deals with life in all of its forms — in the joys of life and the tragedies of life.
“So it’s challenging in that way, emotionally challenging, and I think for somebody coming into this you’d really understand why Stephen King is such a phenomenon in his own way. So it would be an amazing place to start.”
“I think it’s a really good entry point for people if they don’t know Stephen King,” Hiddleston concurs. “The narrative structure is really ingenious, and I think the work of someone who is immensely skilled and practised at his art, but it’s also got a point of view that I think is uniquely his as well.
Chiwetel Ejiofor reflected on how The Life of Chuck would make a fascinating entry point into Stephen King’s work for anyone unfamiliar with him. (StudioCanal)
“He is not afraid to explore some of the aspects of life that are disquieting and unsettling, but as he’s exploring that, he lands resolutely on the side of life, on love, on warmth, on joy, on reasons for living. I think all of his work has a strain of that, even the horror.”
The actors have their own entry points into the King universe, for Hiddleston it was The Shawshank Redemption while for Ejiofor it was The Shining and Stand By Me, all of which have their own unique lessons to take away from it.
Hiddleston says: “The Life of Chuck shares with The Shawshank Redemption this consideration, perhaps, the opposite of life inspires a life energy. Get busy living or get busy dying. And there’s really no choice, Stephen King in that presentation is saying there is no choice — life is the thing.”
Getting a Gene Kelly moment
In the film Tom Hiddleston got to film a full-blown dance sequence complete with multiple different genres of dance. (StudioCanal)
One thing that The Life of Chuck gave the Marvel star was the opportunity to dance, something he has come to feel he only has a finite amount of time left to do in his career.
“As I read the sequence in the story, and I don’t wanna sound overly sentimental about it, but I thought ‘I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do this’,” he explains. “I’m 44 now, and maybe in ten, 20 years time I just won’t have the same energy or the same mobility. This was a really unique opportunity to try something in this dance sequence that maybe I would never get another chance to try, and it was my tribute, in a way, to all the dancers I’ve always loved.”
As Chuck, Hiddleston performs an array of dance styles that bring to mind the classic movie musicals of the Golden Age of Hollywood, from Jazz to Salsa, Cha Cha to Charleston. Sharing insight into performers he aspired to be like, he says: “I remember really specifically discovering some of the great old musicals of the Golden Age of Hollywood, like Swing Time with Fred and Ginger, and then You’ll Never get Rich with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, and Cover Girl, which I spoke about with Mike Flanagan, which is Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth.
The actor admitted that he wanted to perform the dance because he doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be able to dance like that. (StudioCanal)
“And then, of course, Singin’ in the Rain, which is an eternal piece of footage, I think. You could show that to a three-year-old or a 93-year-old and they would smile and understand it.”
It took the actor over a month to nail down the choreography he had to bring out for the all-important dance sequence in the film. He worked with choreographers Mandy Moore and Stephanie Powell, with the actor sharing: “Stephanie worked with me in London and helped me prepare in these extraordinary styles. Jazz, Swing, Salsa, Samba, Cha Cha, Charleston, bossa nova, polka.
“And then they both did a very smart thing. Just before we did it, they said, ‘Remember that this dance is yours, and even though it belongs to Chuck, it belongs to you too. So if ever there’s something you feel like doing, just do it. Feel it, be free.’ And there’s a bit of that in there too.”
Life lessons from The Life of Chuck
The Life of Chuck will leave audiences with many important things to ponder, such as what it means to be alive and who the importance of the people around you. (StudioCanal)
The movie helped Ejiofor, too, especially because his character’s story centres on him finding connection at the end of the world with people he hasn’t seen in years. It is a profound message to leave audiences with, he says: “I think that narratively there was something really exciting for me about the way the story was structured and the idea that life is a kind of mystery and you don’t know entirely who is in your subconscious thoughts.
“There are obviously the people who are very close to us and family and close friends, and all of those people who we kind of consciously think of in our lives — we think of those people and the people who have had a major influence. But there’d be all sorts of [other] people as well, some of them we don’t think are very often, and maybe we don’t think of at all, now that maybe we haven’t thought of for years but who were instrumental in the way that we are.
“They might have been so influential in us and they’re still there in our memory, and maybe at some point they’ll pop back into our thoughts, you know? It made me think about that, it made me made me want to do a deep dive into my own universe.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor admitted the film helped him reflect on all the people he has met in his life and the impact they might have had on his journey without realising it. (StudioCanal)
Hiddleston felt similarly moved as he reflected on Ejiofor’s remarks, adding to his co-star: “You often talk about the bit that you’re performing in the film as likening it to the pandemic, and that experience that we all had of uncertainty and being destabilised by it.
“And I found that I thought of people in that time that I hadn’t thought of in years. I was like, ‘why am I thinking of this old friend from university?’ There were people like that who would just throw themselves forward to the front of my consciousness; it was really interesting that that’s what happened.”
When the credits roll and Chuck’s story is told, perhaps it will leave audiences with the same feeling of reflection as it did for Hiddleston and Ejiofor. It certainly did for me, in fact I thought about the movie and its message about living life to the fullest all the way home and long into the night — that’s the power of Stephen King.
The Life of Chuck premieres in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 20 August.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.movies.yahoo.com ’
