Jessie Buckley in I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Courtesy of Netflix.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things combines a darkly comedic tone with a bleak atmosphere to make for a haunting portrait of a relationship on the rocks.
Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.
Loneliness is a prison. The memories, regrets, and what-ifs of life become trapped on repeat in your head forming a blend of reality and fantasy in your psyche in an effort to fill the void of silence that it creates. In the time of the coronavirus pandemic that feeling may hit closer to home, which is why Charlie Kaufman’s newest film I’m Thinking of Ending Things—now streaming on Netflix—feels so effective.
Each of the film’s three acts takes place largely in isolated locations—a car on a snowy country road, a remote farmhouse, and an empty high school nestled far from the road in the woods—with only stream-of-consciousness-like conversations to disturb the peace. Those conversations happen between the movie’s four players. At the center is an unnamed young woman (Jessie Buckley) who is road tripping with her new boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemmons) to meet his family for the first time.
On the road there, the pair engage in conversations both mundane and philosophically complex. And like any road trip, there are moments of silence which is when the woman’s internal monologue admitting she’s thinking of ending things with Jake fills the space. There are moments where we’re led to believe that something more is afoot. However, more than anything it’s a stunning piece of atmosphere that is equal parts unsettling and irresistibly engrossing.
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Kaufman, who won an Oscar for writing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has only directed three movies—roughly one per decade. His two prior films, Synecdoche, New York and Anamolisa, both leveraged his surrealistic style to explore different crises of identity and the existential quandaries they create. To that end, I’m Thinking of Ending Things may be the most Kaufman-esque of the three. When the pair arrive at Jake’s parents’ farmhouse we become certain that this isn’t just a melancholic take on Meet the Parents.
Instead, we’re treated to an ever-twisting environment where things aren’t quite as they seem and, more interestingly, a step away from reality. That begins with Jake’s mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis) who are almost too eager to share the embarrassing specifics of Jake’s past… and present. From their demeanor, we’d assume they haven’t been out of the house and in contact with other humans in years. It’d account for the mother’s compulsive habit of doing something and then chastising herself for doing it wrong and the father’s inability to say something unproblematic.
Then, the film furthers the ante by playing with space and time. The young woman drifts from room to room finding different scenes of the three family members at different ages and stages of life. At times, she herself becomes a part of the scene. Still, Kaufman plays his cards close to his chest—that is until the final act where reality is bent even more.
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That’s in opposition to the Ian Reid novel it is based on. The book, which I admittedly found to be obtuse, both had too much foreshadowing of its final twist and too many red herrings that when its final reveal was made all I could think was, “what’s the point?” The film strips the book of all the elements intended to distract us and instead shrouds the mystery in opaqueness but doesn’t completely shut us out.
There is a way to read the film. Kaufman didn’t set out to trick or confuse the audience. He has a specific story to tell. One about relationships, identity, regret, longing, and even more. He gives you the tools to solve the mystery, like the moments the movie cuts away to a janitor (Guy Boyd) going about his daily routine, though it may take more than one attempt to understand it all.
That’s not to say it’s not completely satisfying on a first viewing. The darkly comedic tone and bleak atmosphere make for a haunting portrait of a relationship on the rocks. However, the layer just beneath the surface is as complex as the human mind when it’s put under stress. Few people have been able to communicate the non-linear way our minds work, but Kaufman has come damn close. And for that, it’s worth a watch. Then, it begs you for another. Or are you begging for another?
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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