I'm Thinking Of Ending Things review

I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS (2020)

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Stars: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis

Runtime: 134 min

 

 

Everyone cites Being John Malcovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind when they mention director Charlie Kaufman, perhaps forgetting that those were his screenplays not directorial efforts. In fact those are two of his more accessible works - his films as director have been trickier to negotiate.

2015's animated Anomalisa and Synecdoche, New York (2008) were both mind-bending propositions, certainly too weird for mainstream tastes and I'm Thinking Of Ending Things is possibly even more abstract, involving as it does the logic and feel of a partly-unexplained dream.

The film opens with the title words in the voice-over of a never-named young woman. She is about to embark on a road-trip to visit her boyfriend's parents. These two central characters are never named. No one is. They drive through constant snow while chatting in a cut-up disconnected manner. She is an artist and poet and recites some poetry. Her concern is that now the title phrase has entered her mind it can never leave. Should she end the relationship?

The structure of the films is road trip, visit, road trip, coda. The central visit itself is a strange nightmare, as time appears to become unmoored and The Man's parents (a very effective Collette and Thewlis) are continually getting older and younger, things appear and disappear, and general weirdness occurs. Because of this sequence the film has been described as a horror film and although it is somewhat unsettling I think "horror" is a descriptive step too far. 

It is completely baffling, though I'm prepared to believe that it might conceivably make some sort of sense upon repeat viewing...

This is also a long film. During the drives much stilted intellectual conversation occurs. They discuss Wordsworth, musicals with a special emphasis on Oklahoma!, Cassavetes' film Woman Under The Influence and its star Gena Rowlands, they discuss the sexual politics of “Baby It's Cold Outside” (very rapey apparently), and there is much loose philosophical rambling. Think Before Sunrise as directed by David Lynch. 

A little Lynch with your milkshake?

All this climaxes during the return trip in a detour to The Man's high school where the big finale takes the form of a long ballet sequence, performed by a pair of dancing surrogates (the female dancer is Unity Phelan, who is going to be a BIG star). Yep, it's a dance off.

So expect time shifts, inexplicable moments and the possibility that a school janitor hanging round for the entire film is actually The Man in some future iteration. Perhaps the entire film is a memory taking place in the janitor's head? There is a lot that you might understand better if you have read the book by Iain Reid and I found much of it inexplicable, if undeniably atmospheric. Yep, definitely more than a hint of Lynch.

Possibly oddest thing though is that after starting the film with the focus on The Woman, she very much becomes peripheral and by the finale it becomes very much just The Man's story.