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Saturday Evening Move Thread[movigique]: The Life Of Chuck/Eddington

A relatively quiet three weeks since we talked about Return of the Living Dead. We saw two new movies: The Life of Chuck and Eddington, and two classics, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Apartment.

It probably goes without saying that the new movies are not in the same league as the classics, but it's not really fair to come to any conclusions about the state of cinema from that. On IMDB, The Apartment is #98 on the list of all-time greatest movies, while Cuckoo's Nest clocks in at #19.

The Boy (who is now "nearly 29" himself, creating an odd temporal paradox) is one of my metrics for classic films. He, for example, really enjoyed all the 1984 movies we saw—clear-eyed evaluation of the entertainment value of Return of the Living Dead and Repo Man (good, worthy but started stronger than it ended)—and Cuckoo knocked his socks off.

The Apartment less so. I personally felt a strange nostalgia for this time on aesthetic level. Not the depiction of life, really: The idea of an insurance drone whose rent is a about week's pay ($80) for a West Side New York apartment near Central Park is far enough removed to be a fairy tale in 2025. But, man, this is a good looking film, with Wilder bringing his noir chops into a comedy-drama.

I've never seen a young Shirley MacLaine on the big screen, and she's tragically adorable.

When receiving an international honor, Wilder said the story (which showcases immorality) could have happened in any city in the world except Moscow, the communists all broke out in applause. Then he said, "Because nobody has their own apartment in Moscow."

I could talk about it forever. But we can't live in the past, and we wouldn't want to, unless it was the movie past. So let's soldier on.

A manic-pixie-dream-girl failure film.

The Life Of Chuck

The life of Chuck is a three part story told backwards which, during the first part—actually the last part narratively, gawrdangit I hate it when they do this—created in me a sense of anxiety. Not like Eddington, which I'll discuss in a bit, but more like "Oh, no, what have I done?"

You see, the first part shows the world ending. And it's ending in the way a CNN watcher would perceive it as ending. I don't know how else to describe it. Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose name I have been struggling to pronounce for half my life at this point, is Marty, a teacher who's dealing with the death of the Internet, kids not showing up to school, roads literally collapsing, PornHub going away, etc.

Then there's a speech (by Carl Lumbly), a monologue of liberal pieties about man's mistreatment of the Earth, which is short-circuited by "but this is even bigger".

Meanwhile, inexplicably, signs appear all over town, in windows, on TV, "Thanks, Chuck! For 39 great years of service!"

This message is actually weirder after the exposition.

Nobody knows who Chuck is, however.

We meet Chuck in Act II. He's an accountant, played by Tom Hiddleston, and he's at a conference when he walks past a busker drumming. But he doesn't walk past, he starts to dance instead. And he's good. And he's joined by a young woman (Karen Gillan) whose boyfriend just broke up with her via text.

In the last part of the movie (Act I), we see young Chuck, and we get an explanation for his behavior and, essentially, what happened in the first part of the movie.

The Boy and I liked this, but for me, the experience was rather odd. There were things that I didn't like at first that won me over eventually.

Dancing is fun. Movies used to know this.

Pluses, Delayed Pluses

First of all, I have to call out the movie's look. It's a good look. It's not generic, it's not color-coded, it's not ugly. This means it towers over the average 2020s era film.

Second, the acting is impeccable. Hiddleston probably goes without saying. If you only know him as Loki, you might not recognize him. You'll hear a lot about Mark Hamill because it's probably his best performance ever as Chuck's grandfather. Chuck's grandmother is played by Mia Sara (forever best known as Ferris Beuller's girlfriend, Sloan, looking lovely and unmodified here). And if that's not enough of an '80s cage-rattler, Chuck's nosey neighbor who lets him in on the family secret is played by Heather Langenkamp, nasal cannulas hanging on her upper lip.

No, no, she's great. Really. I just need to lie down.

Anyway, the acting is top notch, with many fine actors having small but meaningful parts: Mathew Lillard, Harvey Gullen, David Dastmalchian. On and on.

So, where did it put me off?

Like every generation, GenX believed they would never grow old. (Probably because they were gonna die young in quicksand or possibly being eaten by piranhas.)

Well, there's a narrator (Nick Offerman). I'm leery of narrators. Show me the story. If I wanted a narrator, I'll read the book. But this is very well done. By Act II, I had decided it was a good choice.

The music (The Newton Brothers) does this low-toned "bong" at significant dramatic moments which I rolled my eyes at at first. But ultimately it fits with the tenor of the film: This is a movie about a man's life, and the consequential and inconsequential aspects thereof, and how we don't necessarily know which is which.

It didn't forget its mission. It is very United Colors of Moviemaking, with an improbable racial mix, but everyone's talented so, y'know, who really cares about that?

Is it great? Ironically, perhaps, it's the philosophical underpinning of the story that is the weakest. Like, the third act (the beginning)—a very writerly concept shoehorned into the Everyman's head—doesn't actually make any sense in the context of the story. Literally everyone in the apocalyptic part of the story should know who Chuck is.

Furthermore, the punchline/twist is fine, but also doesn't comport with human behavior in any very admirable way. Chuck has a choice about living that he makes in a life-affirming way. But he also keeps his choice a secret, which strikes me as very selfish.

This is done far, far better in the Korean film Be With You.

"Oh, God. I look 20 years old."

-- Heather Langenkamp in "Nightmare on Elm Street" // "The muffins have a lot of bran in them, good for the digestion." -- Heather Langenkamp in "The Life of Chuck"

Eddington

My review of any Ari Aster movie is going to be "I liked it, but I can't really recommend it to almost anyone." Hereditary is his most normal of films, being essentially a remake of Rosemary's Baby, with emphasis on moody anxiety and shocking gore. I consider Beau is Afraid to be a masterpiece surreal picaresque but I can't blame people for not wanting to spend three hours in anxiety for entertainment purposes.

Well, if you like anxiety, and you especially like it when it hits close to home and reminds you of a bunch of real-world unpleasant experiences, let me tell you: Eddington is the movie for you.

The plot, ostensibly, is that normal, none-too-bright sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix in the most normal role I've seen him in since Signs) is fed up with also none-too-bright establishment stooge mayor (Pedro Pascal in the kind of role he shines in), and so decides to run against him for mayor, immediately turning the sheriff's office into his makeshift campaign HQ (which can't possibly be legal). Well, it's a small town, so as it turns out the sheriff's (mysteriously sexually traumatized) wife (Emma Stone) used to date the sheriff when she was sixteen, and the sheriff's wife vanished years ago, while his son is getting to BLM activism because the one cute white girl in Eddington is an activist, organizing road blocks and apologizing for her privilege.

"Six feet!" Joaquin reminds Pedro, even though he doesn't believe in any of it.

Actually, every white young adult in the movie punctuates every thing they say with apologies for being white. Even at a prominent funeral, the eulogizers apologize for daring to speak on "stolen land". The mayor is a self-serving jerk, but the sheriff is an impetuous idiot who wrecks his own life by trying to tie his wife's trauma to his candidacy.

This ushers in the end of the second act, when the sheriff's impulsive nature gets the better of him, and the third act ratchets into increasing insanity and violence.

But Is It Any Good?

The Boy liked it. The Barbarienne gave it 9 out of 10 (which may be her lowest rating). Me?

Well, "good" or not, I wouldn't recommend this movie to most people. Like, in the beginning of the movie when the sheriff (who is asthmatic) rolls out to the grocery store, and reminds the grocery store bouncers (remember those?) that they don't really have the authority to police masking, and everyone's standing six feet apart waiting to get in, and nobody's wearing a mask properly anyway, but everyone's talking about all the death caused by Covid-19 (or is it?)—there's no denying that Aster captures the insanity of the lockdown/masking period.

There's also no denying that the events of the movie, which has everyone scrolling their devices constantly, and seeing stories about murder hornets, pedophile rings, etc., go by, reflect the distracted, sanity-baiting life a la mode.

Actually, the entire movie is populated by morons and madmen.

The small scope of the film works as a perfect satire. There is one homeless guy who wanders around. He's genuinely a menace but there's not really anything anyone can do for him or to him, and he ends up being the catalyst for the sheriff's denouement. (Keep the word "denouement" in mind. It's going to come back.) The BLM protests block a road, but there's really no reason for anyone to care about it. There's no traffic on the road, and the town appears to be largely deserted. (The Mayor's son mocks the Sheriff for driving around yelling out his campaign promises to, essentially, no one.)

The sheriff's crazy mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell) watches a constant feed of conspiracy theories, and her ultimate fate is clearly meant to be satirical—it doesn't make any actual sense—but I didn't feel like this was a political film. If it was, it fails at that, and (ironically?) it might have been a better film if it had been political.

Ad Aster

As my children pointed out, this is an Ari Aster film, and as such things that I view as its failings are probably my own in having the wrong expectations.

Your wife, introducing you to the cult leader she's about to allow to impregnate her.

To me, the brilliance of Beau is Afraid is the largely agency-free Beau struggles to survive and manages, ultimately, to gain some control over an existence which is literally insane. I don't mean that he's insane; I mean the world is insane. It is, at times, out to get him, and if we take his struggle literally (or maybe even if only metaphorically), his willingness to forge on become increasingly admirable. In this framework, the indignities and absurdities of the world are not just encouraging us to point-and-laugh.

Here, the Sheriff has apparent agency, but this is largely thwarted by his own impulsiveness. By the end of Act II, he does something to set himself on a path that goes increasingly out-of-control. The movie is over at that point, and the last hour is just a depiction of his descent—the denouement, in other words is a full hour before the end of the movie.

So, while the proceedings were often entertaining—e.g., a Kyle Rittenhouse callback where a young man saving the Sheriff's life has his phone in one hand and a gun that he's filming while he's firing it in the other—they were dramatically pointless. There was nothing to be learned, and no one to root for, unless one wants to root for "mere anarchy".

I expected better emotional resonance or, as I said, even a political message might have been welcome if just to explain why I sat there for two-and-a-half hours. Somehow, I expected more.

When the cops pull up to remind you to wear a mask. While sitting in a car. Alone. At the outskirts of town.

But I didn't expect anything on the level of The Apartment or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which maybe is actually telling in itself.