![]() ![]() ![]() The girlfriend’s name changes several times, as does her supposed academic field of study, suggesting that she may be less a flesh-and-blood woman than a hazily reconstructed memory of one. Coming so early in the story, that dead giveaway likely goes straight over the head of most viewers but Kaufman isn’t exactly trying to hide it.Īs Jake and his girlfriend drive to his parents’ house, their strange, meandering conversation contains numerous clues that things are not at all what they seem, with virtually every line a piece of a larger puzzle. As she speaks in voice-over of her “rare and intense attachment” to her boyfriend, we see first the back of an old man and then the back of Plemons as Jake. In the film’s opening moments, we see the janitor looking out the window at the young woman. The fact is, if you go back and watch the movie a second time, you’ll realize that the clues were there in plain sight from the start. It’s been done, so therefore you’re looking for it as an audience.” Indeed, as Kaufman points out, the it-was-all-a-dream gimmick is pretty old hat anyway: “That particular twist in movies is not much of a twist at this point. So I tried to reframe it in my mind as a character exploration of a relationship, with the ideas of memory and projection and loneliness and isolation as the things that move you through the story.” I felt like it was kind of for me a fool’s errand to make that the point of the movie. “I don’t think I was particularly interested in maintaining suspense. “I’m not interested in twists in movies,” he says flatly. Night Shyamalan-style turn at the end, nor did he see himself as making a thriller per se. Likewise, Kaufman says he never cared about delivering a head-snapping M. In writing the book, Reid says he saw it more as a literary character study than some nail-biter with a twist ending. Kaufman handles the conclusion more elliptically, with a dance sequence (one of many references to the musical “Oklahoma!”) that essentially acts out the sad life of a man who has metaphorically killed his promising young self and a fantasy sequence in which Jake accepts the Nobel Prize. The story ends, tragically, with the janitor’s suicide, revealing the double meaning in the film’s very title.Īll of this is made much more explicit in Reid’s original book, with the voice of the girlfriend (who is never named) fusing with that of the janitor in the final pages, as he/she stabs him/herself in the neck with a wire hanger. Jake’s girlfriend was never actually his girlfriend, just an idealized version of someone he briefly encountered one night at a bar but didn’t have the guts to pursue - or maybe an amalgam of all the “ones that got away.” The whole road trip has been a journey through Jake’s memories, unfulfilled wishes, obsessions and regrets. Kaufman’s film concludes with a revelation: Everything we have seen, from start to finish, has essentially been the mental projection of a lonely old high school janitor who has failed to live up to the dreams of romantic and academic glory he had as a young man. If you haven’t seen “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” we suggest reading this review or this story about the making of the film, then come back. Surrealistic storytelling that bends back in on itself like an M.C. ![]() Fantasies, projections, memories and delusions. Explorations of regret, failure and loneliness. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” bears all of the thematic obsessions and formal daring of Kaufman’s previous work as a screenwriter and director in mind-bending films such as “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” and “Synecdoche, New York.” Characters trapped in the labyrinths of their own psyches. But where the story goes from there - and where it ends up - involves a whole other kind of journey. That’s how you know it’s a Charlie Kaufman movie.Īdapted from a 2016 novel by Canadian author Iain Reid, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” begins from an utterly simple, even mundane premise: A young couple (Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley) takes a road trip through a snowstorm to visit the boyfriend’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) at their family farm. On a basic level, you may be wondering, “What was that?” You may be perplexed, disturbed, exhilarated or all of the above. If you just finished watching the new Netflix psychological thriller “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” chances are you have a lot of questions. ![]()
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