Our pasts often shape our present, creating either obstacles for us to overcome, or helping to create a clear vision of what we’d like to do or like to avoid. When entering into a relationship with a new person, the baggage that comes with them can impede the connection you seek to establish. The latest surrealist take from writer/director Charlie Kaufman explores one such story.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things follows a young woman (Jessie Buckley) taking a road trip with her new boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to his family farm to meet his mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis), despite her plans to end their relationship. After arriving to their destination amidst a blizzard, bizarre happenings cause the young woman to question the nature of everything she knew or understood about her boyfriend, herself, and the world.
If you’re at all familiar with the work of Charlie Kaufman, you go into this film knowing of its esoteric and abstract nature. Accordingly, audience reaction to I’m Thinking of Ending Things will depend heavily on each viewer’s reaction to complicated, metaphorical stories that aren’t easily dissected after one viewing. Kaufman tinkers with perspective and time in the film quite liberally, most strikingly during the visit to Jake’s parents’ house as we see his mother and father throughout their lives, from mother of a young Jake to a hospice patient, from adult father to Alzheimer’s sufferer. Kaufman seeks to explore the human condition and emotion in a way that’s more visceral than conventional, using Jake as the conduit. If David Lynch or Ingmar Bergman circa Persona aren’t your cup of tea, this film may have already lost you. But pondering what Kaufman seeks to explore will entice lovers of surrealist, symbolic cinema.
The film acts like a journey to the center of its male lead’s mind, encompassing all of his fears and issues that his new paramour must deal with if she’s to continue on with the relationship. From his relationship with his parents and dealing with their aging and fear of inevitably losing them, to his past experiences with pretty girls as a shy young man and how that has colored his view on women, including Jessie, and his alma mater being a place to which he retreats and Jessie must pull him out of, all of the characters’ travels act as metaphors for the obstacles within their relationship. Through Jesse’s travails and fears, we explore the larger humanistic questions surrounding love, trauma, loneliness, and all else that everyone us must grapple with during our time here on Earth. Our experiences with embarrassing parents, classmates that danced on our insecurities, love interests that didn’t pan out, fears of what the future holds, all shape who we become and how we interact with the world around us.
Accompanying the surrealist nature of the plot, Kaufman and director of photography Lukasz Zal imbue the film with a tight 4:3 aspect ratio that accentuates the stifling, claustrophobic nature of the trip to meet Jake’s parents while features of their surrounding environment like the snow, Jake’s laundry, and other items provide metaphorical clues about the nature of the characters’ on-screen interaction or hints to the direction of the plot. Jessie Buckley and Toni Collette are the standout actors in the film with Buckley convincingly playing a confused girlfriend trying to navigate the treacherous terrain of having a partner with unresolved issues that are preventing them from fully connecting as a couple. Collette is her usual dynamic self portraying the full adult life cycle of a single character with great aplomb. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a film that demands multiple viewings in order to digest everything that Charlie Kaufman throws at the audience. For some, this kind of attentive requirement for a very abstract, surrealist film is a heavy lift and too high of a cost. But for those familiar with his work, or fans of in-depth, inventive storytelling, the film is sure to be an investment that will pay dividends in perpetuity.
Image: Netflix
