I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Strange, bewildering & full of misgivings, I'm Thinking of Ending Things only gets more awkward & confusing as it progresses but it still creates enough intrigue for the viewers to stick around and see if the whole ordeal of sitting through the film is worth it in the end. Now I don't know about the others but my answer to that is a plain & simple no.

Written & directed by Charlie Kaufman, it's only sensible to expect the unexpected when journeying into one of his stories but unlike the clever ideas & concepts that he came up with to explore existentialism in his earlier works, there is no structure to this story. It is just a hotchpotch of thoughts & impressions thrown into the mix and presented without consideration.

The film still brims with a sense of foreboding for the most part if not all and is at its most interesting during the farmhouse scene, thanks to the remarkable talents on screen. David Thewlis & Toni Collette easily steal the show while Jessie Buckley & Jesse Plemons do their best to keep things running. One might expect the story to unfurl its mysteries in the end but this one simply refuses to.

Overall, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a tedious, frustrating & convoluted mess that defies any logic & understanding and unfolds like a series of thought process simultaneously going inside a troubled mind that doesn't know how to stop them. A bizarre, surreal & confounding experience that keeps getting weirder as it nears its conclusion, Charlie Kaufman's latest film may dazzle his fans with its allegories but it sure isn't for me.

This movie cannot stand alone. It is meaningless if you have not read the book. Kaufman spectacularly fails to bring the book to life as an independent story.

But the "spectacularly" in that sentence is not entirely about the failure... rather that he fails while presenting something rather spectacular. The film is gloriously beautiful in the way he brings symbolism and metaphor to life. It is gorgeously filmed and very well acted, although the pacing and editing could use a little less ego and a little more attention to flow. Other directors may have made some different choices in presenting those things that were more grounded in reality as opposed to those that were surreal. Instead, the whole thing was presented in such a state of hyperreality that finding the kernels of truth were impossible.

The biggest failures come in the stark omissions: Kaufman's refusal to share what question is being referred to in those phone calls where the disembodied voice says "there is only one question..." That question is critical and is specifically laid out in the book. It is the entire meaning and motivation. He also fails to ever tie back that question, and the titular phrase, to the only character to whom they actually matter. He also fails to show or explain explicitly what happened to that character in the end, and without that ending, there is no meaning. The film just becomes a very beautiful companion piece to the novel, highlighting some scenes and lending new imagery to them. It is not, in itself, a complete story. It's more of a "mood."

Charlie Kaufman's latest weirdfest is from the point of view of a young woman going with her boyfriend to visit his parents. Almost the entire first half hour of the movie is them talking in the car. Seriously. They talk about art, she recites a poem, she muses to herself. It captures the weird tensions and bumpy flow of a strained relationship, but my God, it's like 25 minutes of that!

But I kept going, because there was something weird and intriguing about it all. And when they reach the parents, it gets way weirder. Events are surreal and everything in the house keeps ... changing in weird and unexpected ways.

Periodically we see an old guy at work. No explanation.

While it's all very strange, there is an emotional throughline in that it captures the weird discomfort of parents and dealing with people's baggage. It is a Kafka-esque relationship.

None of it seems to make sense, and the movie gets truly lunatic by the end. I had some vague ideas, but nothing close to an understanding of what was supposed to have happened. Still, I had generally enjoyed it and there were amazing moments.

Then I read the wikipedia plot summary for the novel this is based on, and that was helpful in understanding what had happened. And then I found a great Vanity Fair article that cleared up a lot more questions.

This is probably one of these movies you should watch twice if you want to figure it out for yourself. There really are clues that in retrospect gives some suggestion of what's going on. And if you know what's going on, it would be a different movie in a lot of ways.

Once I understood what I'd seen I could appreciate all the different levels this movie was dealing with in parallel.

My girlfriend didn't like the movie but couldn't stop talking about and analyzing it. It's definitely the kind of movie you need to talk about after.

Kaufman is uncompromising in his vision, which is why I suspect he'll never make anything as enjoyable as the movies that he scripted but didn't direct. But overall I'd recommend watching this, especially if you like or don't mind a lot of weirdness.

The hardest part about watching this movie was trying to figure out why I was watching it. At the end, I had to look up interpretations, which I think took a lot of the magic and reflection out of what a movie should be. I wish it would've been a little less abstract, for those of us who watched it independently from the book, and aren't abstract minded enough to pull meaning out of thin air.

Other than not knowing what the hell was happening, the acting was phenomenal, and so was the dialogue. Now off to the library to try to get something useful out of this story.

I may be obtuse, but will please somebody explain, is there a purpose to this movie?