‘The Life of Chuck’ Beautifully Shows The Meaning Of Life – But With No Afterlife
(REVIEW) Benjamin Franklin famously once said, “In life, nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Death is one of those things that the religious and non-religious have in common. And it forces both to contemplate how to find meaning in life.
Religious people have typically had the advantage in this regard, as the idea of eternal life is far more appealing for most people than the alternative. But when secular writers and artists dedicate themselves to unpack how life can be valuable (even if it all ends), they can often create some transcendently moving works of art, and prompt valuable conversations between the religious and non-religious.
Enter “The Life of Chuck.” Adapted from Stephen King’s novella by celebrated filmmaker Mike Flanagan (“The Haunting of Hill House” and “Dr. Sleep”), “The Life of Chuck” follows Charles Krantz (played by Tom Hiddleston as an adult and Jacob Trembly as a teenager) in three parts) as he faces growing up, adulthood and the end of the world. The film also stars a massive ensemble cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Nick Offerman and David Dastmalchian, who all play parts of Chuck’s world that he must face is ending.
The movie is easily one of the most beautiful I have seen this year. It’s beautifully written, beautifully shot, beautifully scored and beautifully acted. It’s a film that introduces you to dozens of characters and somehow makes you fall in love with all of them, takes individual moments and makes them transcendent, even as the characters wrestle with the fact that they know their lives are going to end (and they don’t believe that those lives have any cosmic significance).
The film plays out non-linearly in three acts and that’s part of its strength. Because it tells you the end of the story at the start, it gives you a way to frame your own “present day” in light of the future that the film wants to convey: We all die and when that happens, a whole universe dies with us. This is the dramatic question at the heart of the film: Does our life matter if everything eventually ends?
“The Life of Chuck” answers this question with a yes, doing so by focusing on individual moments of joy and connection between people that we know will eventually end, such as, a mother and son dancing, a random dance with strangers and so on.
When Chuck muses to himself why God would make the world if everything was eventually going to end, he notes that dance he had with strangers and says maybe that’s why God made the world. These individual moments, and people, when they’re strung together, feel significant and worth experiencing to the fullest. You leave the movie wanting to experience life – however temporary – the way Chuck did.
The “love your life now because you’ll eventually die” ethos is one of the most common refrains in movies and TV shows that largely presuppose a secular framework. Doctor Who famously said in “The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe”: “What's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later. The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.”
While belief in the afterlife is popular, this isn’t the case in Hollywood. This year’s “The Monkey” shows how toxic people become when they try to avoid the inevitability of death, and showcases the happiness found in appreciating your temporary life (also through the metaphor of dancing). In my conversation on atheism with atheist Matas Gelezauskas on “The Overthinkers” podcast, we agreed that the difference between a religious and non-religious conceptions of meaning was that religious people find meaning that surpasses our present life, whereas secular people find meaning that’s confined to the present life.
This is a way of showing what Dan Harmon described as having a meaningful life in a meaningless universe.
“The knowledge that nothing matters, while accurate, gets you nowhere. The planet is dying, the sun is exploding, the universe is cooling, nothing’s gonna matter; the further back you pull the more that truth will endure,” he said. “But when you zoom in on Earth, when you zoom in to a family, when you zoom into a human brain and a childhood and experience, you see all these things that matter.”
“The Life of Chuck” has the characters wrestle with these ideas explicitly, quoting Carl Sagan’s description of how insignificant humans are in the universe. The level of beauty and vulnerability with which the film asks these questions gives it a lot of potential in deepening the religious versus secular conversation on this topic.
For example, from the perspective of a Christian, there are obvious cracks in the coherence of the film’s worldview. First, it is a rather confusing inclusion of God. As mentioned before, Chuck ponders why God made the world if it was just going to end, and then decides it’s because of individual beautiful moments. Yet, it’s perplexing to talk about God as if it’s real when the hope of an afterlife is never considered once in the story.
The focus on individual moments rather than a larger story as the basis for meaning is also subtly undermined by the structure of the story itself. The three parts are told backwards so that each story becomes more meaningful, specifically because we are watching it in light of its ending. When Chuck begins to give meaning to his own life is specifically when he is told and shown that it’s going to end.
Finally, there is the matter of Chuck’s admission at the end that he will have the best life possible because he will choose not to think about his death. This lines up with something the late evangelical pastor Tim Keller often noted, that for atheists, to be happy they have to not think too much about how life is going to end. But for Christians, the more you think about the end of the story, the happier you can be. It’s one thing for a Christian intellectual to say that, but for someone to affirm it as part of a non-religious worldview themselves is very notable.
On the other hand, “The Life of Chuck” shows emphatically that the meaning of life is found through the experience of connecting with others, embracing those connections and service to them, of finding those moments of mutual joy together. It gives us the experience of meaning by making us look closer at the moments that make up our lives. While a religious person might rightly critique “The Life of Chuck” for not having sufficient coherence to its worldview, the film demonstrates the wonder of the experience of meaning in ways that few – if any – religious movies can match.
“The Life of Chuck” is a film that profoundly portrays the glory of life even as it denies life after death. Hopefully, the religious and non-religious alike can watch this film and have their faith in the value of life renewed – and spark discussion between them of how to live that out better.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.