I'm Thinking Of Ending Things

 2020, d. Charlie Kaufman - Netflix

Like Paul Thomas Anderson who I returned to with The Phantom Thread, Charlie Kaufman was another one of the creators that was a key part of my formative cinephile years in the 90's.  Having been a lapsed cinephile throughout the 2010's, though, I feel like I've lost track of what Kaufman has done since, what?  Her? (I've been watching too much Arrested Development...typing "Her?" made me laugh out loud).  A quick something search tells me, first, that Her was a product of Kaufman's one-time collaborator Spike Jonze and that he was not actually involved with that picture, and second, that I've missed the TV movie How and Why (which I've never heard of, but starring Arrested Development's Michael Cera) and the stop-motion Animalisa in between this latest directorial effort and his first on Synechdoche, New York.  I'm only returning to his latest work because of ease of access, with I'm Thinking of Ending Things being a Netflix original film.

[Boy, that was a messy, messy paragraph.  I thought I knew where I was going with this review, but then it turns out my faulty memory and lack of research have derailed those plans.  I'm embarassing myself.]     

I'm thinking of ending things, like Synechdoche, is a story-as-metaphor, where what is happening is less about the reality of what is going on, and more about what the presentation means.  For someone like myself who appreciates creativity and weirdness, this type of film should really be something I lock into and just lap it up til it's done.  But stories that work only as metaphor, like Synechdoche or Darren Aronofsky's mother! I find both engaging and frustrating     Where mother! was about personifying environmental anxiety as human drama, I'm Thinking... is much more internal, much more individualistic.  It's almost a character study but it's not obvious until the end who the character it is that we're studying, or what the metaphor is... and even then, it may take a little something searching to find some discourse that helps explain it a little better.  I was mostly engaged (it does feel a little long) but at times I found it a little too esoteric, but I don't think I was ever actually frustrated with it.

[Where am I going with this, exactly? I seem to just be meandering, my thoughts unclear.  I'm distracted, Do I want to be doing this?  This film is more clever than I am, and I just need to admit it.  I'm embarassing myself.]

 The first half hour of the film takes place in a car, a segment of a lengthy road trip a woman (Jessie Buckley) is taking with her recent-ish boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his parents for the first time.  It's sleeting outside, the wipers rhytmically sway back and forth providing the soundtrack to their conversation (I'm very impressed at how the editing keeps the rhythm of the wiping, it must have been a bit of a challenge in doing so).  We hear inside her thoughts, but the first time she thinks "I'm thinking of ending things", he say a little "Hm?" as if he heard her.  This is just one of many little curiosities that arise along the journey to the parents house.  At one point he asks her to recite the poem she's been writing... but on top of being a poet she has all these other majors that she's studying, and jobs that she has, and creative things she does.  And I think he keeps calling her a different name every time he says it.  Something strange seems to be going on here.  She recites her poem, and it's long.  Too long to be something she's just written and is unsure about, too well formed and well rehearsed.  People don't just remember poems that long.  Something seems amiss.  And every time she seems to start to talk about perhaps, you know, ending things with him, there seems to be a little blip in time.  Suddenly they're at his parents house.

[Am I saying too much, am I giving too much away? I've listened to at least two podcasts talking about this film already.  If everything I'm about to say just a regurgitation of what they said?  Do I have no original thoughts of my own?  Am I ruining this for everyone?  It's not what happens, but how it happens, right?  I'm embarrassing myself.]

even the posters seem to be
making reference to other art
and culture

The parents (David Thewlis and Toni Collette) are an odd sort, and their surroundings likewise.  There's a weirdness in the air.  The basement door, somethings up with it.  The dog seems to appear out of nowhere, shake itself off vigorously for too long, then disappear again.  The parents sometimes seem younger and sometimes older. Why is there a picture of her as a child in his house?  What is going on, it's definitely eerie.  Not necessarily horrifying, but certainly not normal.  It's like the ending of 2001:A Space Odyssey only it's the middle of the film.  There are little things throughout that tell us she isn't who he says she is, little tells that continue to compound when they leave the house, get sidetracked at a dairy mart, and then wind up snowed in at his old high school, where they run into the janitor that the film has been occasionally cutting to all this time.  And then an extended interpretive dance sequence is used to, basically, explain what is actually going on...depending on how well you speak the language of  "interpretive dance".

[What am I doing? I'm just giving it all away here.  But then, the reality is, whomever is reading this has either watched the film, is intending to watch the film or has no interest in watching the film...I'm not going to change anyone's mind here.  That's not what I'm here to do?  What am I here to do?  I'm embarrassing myself.]

[SPOILERS (maybe)]

The metaphor - which I *kind* of picked up on, but searched on to corroborate - is about loneliness, about a life lived too deep in arts, culture and criticism to the the expense of actually living life, these passions getting in the way of connecting with others.  Both characters that Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons play here, are figments of this janitor's mind.  Plemons represents his younger self, almost unwavering in performance the way he sees himself.  Buckley is an amalgam of women, some perhaps real, some imagined, some maybe only characters from a story.  She is the focus of this story, and yet she is the most mercurial character, like in his mind he just can't lock down who she should be, and even in this fantasy she still doesn't want to be with him.  I don't know if the tone of this is more about regret or depression.  And is the title of the film, which seems to be about her thoughts of dumping him, is it actually about him thinking of suicide....?

[Is that the right read of this film? I don't know. I probably need to watch it again armed with the knowledge of what happens and therefore able to invest more in the investigation of the metaphor. I should just stop typing now.  I'm embarrassing myself.]