It’s hard to know where to begin with The Life of Chuck. Anything you could say about it would rob new viewers of the specialness that comes from going in completely fresh. Suffice to say that it’s suitable for all audiences and that it’s a great example of popular cinema’s ability to speak to the life experiences of a large cross-section of viewers without dumbing anything down. It straddles the edges of both, greeting-card oversimplifications and sentimentality, but does not cross over, leaving the audience to discuss what, exactly, the takeaway might be.

An adaptation of the same-titled short story by Stephen King, this feature from writer-director and King adaptation specialist Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) is broken into three…well, “acts” doesn’t feel right, because this isn’t a conventional drama; so let’s say “movements,” the word that describes the section of a symphony or other classical music piece. This is a musical movie, not just because it features musical numbers. It weaves its spell not merely by what it does, but how it moves, and what it chooses to say or not say, and when it decides to proceed to the next scene.

The movie is a non-chronological look at the life of an accountant named Chuck Krantz, played as an adult by Tom Hiddleston and in younger incarnations by juvenile performers. The first movement is set in a future where civilization, as we’ve always known it, appears to be falling apart, beginning with Internet failure and progressing from there to electric power and possibly even existence. The main characters are two public school teachers, Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), who were once married. They come together again when they talk on the phone as crisis friends, and Marty impulsively decides to visit her. There’s a long, lovely scene en route to the reunification in which Marty has a wide-ranging conversation with his old friend Sam Yarborough (Carl Lumbly), the owner of a beloved local funeral home, and who (we later learn) happens to be the man who buried people who were important to Chuck.

News reports keep intruding or adding to scenes. Technologies and services that we take for granted are no longer guaranteed. Online access ends early in the story. Phones are next. There is an earthquake in California that tears away part of the state and dumps it into the sea. More disasters are coming. The environment is collapsing – or maybe rebelling. And images of Chuck start appearing everywhere. Who is this man? A billboard says that everyone is supposed to thank him for 39 wonderful years. What does this mean? How will it relate to the rest of the movie?

All of the film’s movements could be self-contained short movies, but the middle one, which concentrates on a single moment, is the neatest. The adult Chuck passes a street drummer (Taylor Gordon) and spontaneously breaks into an improvised dance routine, then beckons a recently-dumped onlooker, Janice Halliday (Annalise Basso), to join him. There’s true chemistry between them. What will they make of it?

The entire movie is, you retrospectively realize, filled with moments in which characters make flash decisions that lead to great satisfaction or great sadness or something else. It’s a sideways route to get into the idea that every moment in life counts for something, and that, by extension, you have to make every moment count, or at least be present, because you never know when Death is going to punch your ticket. Don’t worry, though: this isn’t the kind of movie where people’s lives are picked apart like equations until they locate the instant where things went wrong, or right. It’s more mysterious than that.

The denouement of Chuck and Janice’s dance becomes more powerful once you’ve absorbed the final act, which covers Chuck’s childhood and adolescence. A moment that was teased in a very brief, wordless flashback in the middle movement is filled out at length when we meet Chuck’s grandparents, played by Mark Hamill as his grandfather (a strong and moral man whose advice is not the best) and Mia Sara as his grandmother, who loves to dance.

Every performer makes a strong impression, including those who get just one scene. There are a lot of literary and cinematic antecedents here, from A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life to Amélie and the brilliant Belgian movie Totos les Hero (worth seeking out if you haven’t already seen it). But ultimately, this movie is very much its own thing.