Mike Flanagan on Chuck’s life: dance, death and challenging gender expectations

Mike Flanagan It is not foreign to horror. In the last decade, he has built a fiercely faithful fan base through intimate and disturbing explorations of pain, trauma and supernatural, usually with a book by Stephen King in one hand and one camera in the other.

But his latest film, Chuck’s lifeIt’s something else entirely. It is still strange. It is still the king. But he is also joyful, confident and full of dances.

Speaking with the variety, Flanagan explained how the story came in a moment of personal crisis and how its emotional impact changed the course of its creative path.

“This story arrived in my life at a very interesting moment, because I read it in April 2020. The pandemic block has a month … hit the point of home, to the point that I was initially reluctant to finish reading it. I didn’t know if I could take it.”

But something has moved.

“In the end, I was shocked by the fact that I had been brought from that place in a completely different head space of optimism, gratitude and joy. I was crying and not tears of sadness.”

That emotional change has become the foundation of Chuck’s lifeA Flanagan film describes how perhaps his most personal work. “If I could turn it into a film that could do it for another person … then what an incredible opportunity,” he said.

Tom Hiddleston He leads the film like Chuck, whose life is told on the contrary through three acts, which approach the end of the world and reveals themselves to childhood. The narrative structure is not conventional and Flanagan was adamant in preserving it.

“Life only makes sense when you look back. If you started with its childhood and worked it all the way, it doesn’t seem to contain the same wisdom … the catharsis of looking back and seeing the connections.”

This insistence on non -traditional narrative was one of the main reason why Flanagan made the film independently.

“I am sure that if we had tried to do it through the traditional study system … it would have been commissioned to make it much more ordinary.”

The film presents an important dance sequence with Hiddleston and Co-Star Low Annalizechoreographed by Mandy Moore And marked by a live battery, and was intimate. Flangan said:

“My favorite movie of all time is all that bob jazz was. I would not have presumed to tell Mandy Moore how to chorographed … my task was to capture them by creating this spontaneous and joyful experience.”

To prepare, Flanagan and filmmaker Eben Bolter He studied dance scenes of the era of the silent film to the bottom of the golden age of Hollywood, developing a sequence that “would ideally dance with them”.

“It wasn’t even so much in filming, but in the assembly. Finding a way for me, like the publisher, to try to become the invisible dancer … is one of the most complicated sequences in which he has ever been involved.”

Of course, no Flanagano project based on a King story would be complete without the king himself. The director described their creative partnership as respectful, dissolved and based on trust.

“It is very serious that the book is the book and the film is the film and does not want to influence your creative expression.

“He gets approval on all casting. He is reading the screenplays and sends his thoughts … but above all he surrenders and then we talk about it widely after the fact.”

When Spindle He came, King gave him green light without hesitation.

“He was very similar to” you do you “and loved the film.”

As for the neighbor, Flanagan faced Carrie as a series, and this required a little more convincing. King’s initial answer?

“‘Why?’ His first answer was: “Leave it alone.

But once Flanagan has exposed his vision, King changed his melody.

“Then he said:” Ohh, now I’m interested, just like a fan. “”

Chuck’s life It may not seem like a Mike Flanagan film on the surface, but under its dance rhythms and surreal optimism is the same profound empathy and a strong narrative that has always defined her work. It is still a matter of facing mortality. He is doing it only with a little more of joy.