"Matthew Lillard's monologue in Mike Flanagan's The Life of Chuck is the actor's only scene in the film, and it's quite short. (Naturally, one of the reasons I'm thinking about it nowadays is because of that stupid kerfuffle this month over Quentin Tarantino bad-mouthing Lillard and several others during a podcast interview.) In it, Lillard's character is just marveling at how quickly life on Earth appears to be unraveling."
"The Life of Chuck's first section is pretty much a depiction of the apocalypse, as we witness what appears to be the end of, like, everything. (The film takes some wild turns after that.) As Lillard goes through a litany of all the catastrophes that have happened-wars, riots, governments overthrown, volcanoes in Germany-he speaks with a combination of bemused disbelief and abject grief, at times seeming to break into laughter only for it to turn out he's actually crying."
"This is not an actor I tend to think of as having a lot of range, but he goes through pretty much every single human emotion there is in the course of about two minutes, all while the camera remains close on his face. It's magnificent, a bravura feat of acting-in a film that eventually goes to all sorts of other places, so that by the end we've almost forgotten that its opening act was a disaster flick."
Matthew Lillard delivers a brief but astonishing monologue in Mike Flanagan's The Life of Chuck, appearing in the film for only one short scene. The film's opening section portrays an apparent apocalypse, cataloguing wars, riots, governments overthrown, and even volcanoes in Germany. Lillard's performance cycles through bemused disbelief, abject grief, laughter that becomes crying, and almost every human emotion in roughly two minutes while the camera stays close on his face. The scene functions as a bravura feat of acting, making the opening feel like a disaster film before the movie later takes wild turns.
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