OPINION: Optimism, no matter how contradictory

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

This is what Marty Anderson, a high school teacher to a group of unfocused students, reads to his class at the beginning of “The Life of Chuck” before his students interrupt him. The news say a portion of California has broken off into the sea. Perhaps Walt Whitman’s poetry can wait for later.

It’s the latest in a series of bizarre events happening all over the world. The United States is now the Union. Flooding swallows homes in France. There’s a volcano erupting in Germany. During Marty’s parent-teacher conferences, the parents seem more concerned about when the internet will come back online.

There’s a nonchalance to the end of the world which makes the beginning of “The Life of Chuck” less tortured than an apocalypse would suggest. It isn’t news broadcasts which dramatically raise the stakes, it’s from a neighbor who’s got done walking three hours home because their car is stuck in a sinkhole. Disaster seems to be a part of life now.

Yet, there seems to be something silly going on around Marty’s dying world. A billboard shows the face of one normal and possibly boring man, saying “Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!”

Whoever Marty, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, asks, they have no idea who Chuck is. Yet, he’s everywhere. He’s on benches, the radio and the TV, even after all broadcasts are disconnected. Marty calls this oversaturation of random advertisements “our last meme.”

By the end of the movie’s intro, cheekily titled “Act Three,” Chuck will become cosmically important to the world. Marty goes on his own journey at the end of times, meeting with his ex-wife one last time as the stars fade from the night sky. In some way, the end of the universe seems to be tied to Chuck, but more importantly, Chuck’s end is the end of the universe itself.

Later on, in “Act One” which depicts Chuck as a boy, that Whitman line comes up again. “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Chuck asks his teacher, who is exhausted (the narrator says she won’t last long in the public school system), what it means. Eager to see a student paying attention, she carefully explains.

Our perspective of reality isn’t just tied to who we are. What’s inside our skulls contains what we are, but it’s also what we remember. Maybe it’s our friends. Maybe it’s where we’ve been. Maybe it’s those we’ll never see again. And it’s all of what we know.

“The Life of Chuck,” despite a few hiccups in its sincerity which removes the chance for interpretation, is nonetheless a heartwarming note on the wonder of life itself. As an adaptation of one of Stephen King’s off-brand stories and directed by similarly off-brand Mike Flanagan, it’s what remains from the two’s body of work which elevates the full piece.

King has a knack for portraying the anxieties of youth and what generally disturbs young ones. By the time the movie reaches “Act One,” it’s where King’s influence can be felt. Until then, Flanagan’s ability to tie emotional wonder to an environment of dread carries “The Life of Chuck” to its eventual existential point.

It can be seen from a mile away, but by the time the movie reaches it, it feels like a longer flight. Telling the story in reverse order, knowing Chuck will die at the age of 39 at a time of complete dread, lingers through the film’s joyous moments. This could be seen as pessimistic, but instead the movie takes an aggressive stance toward optimism, no matter how contradictory.

This is seen most in “Act Two,” worth mentioning by itself as one of the most extraordinary moments in movies this year. Tom Hiddleston’s performance of Charles Krantz, the first time we see him alive in the whole movie, begins with the attention it’s been building since we first saw his face on a billboard.

The narrator, performed by Nick Offerman in his signature baritone voice, says he wears the “armor of accounting,” a suit and shoes. He’s unassuming, and a nearby busking drummer thinks of him only as Mister Businessman, who might be headed to the business hotel. For one reason or another, the drummer switches up her beat for him.

Chuck stops. He puts his suitcase down. The narrator said he would die nine months later, as the audience has already seen. For all this build of Chuck, this moment is everything. What will Chuck do? What makes him worth thanking, those 39 years? As a catalyst for an apocalypse, what is Chuck?

What follows, without spoiling, can only be described as movie magic. I don’t actually like that phrase, because magic has so often been squashed into computer effects and falsities for the sake of it being cheaper and easy to do. So, when a real performance happens, that’s when I can truly say something is magic.

“The Life of Chuck” can’t help but feel somewhat cliche, but this type of optimism is so hard to come by in such a sincere way. The grief which affects Chuck, and by extension Marty and everyone else in this dying world, isn’t enough to stop our fundamentally human selves from love and expression.

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”