I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Ratings: 2.5/5
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Producers: Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Robert Salerno, Stephanie Azpiazu
Genre: Psychological Drama
Language: English
Release Date: 4 September 2020
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Star Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Ryan Laughtner Steele, Unity Phelan, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd, Frederick E. Wodin, Hadley Robinson, Gus Birney, Abby Quinn, Colby Minifie, Anthony Grasso, Teddy Coluca, Jason Ralph, Oliver Platt
Plot: Based on Iain Reid’s novel that shares the same name, the film opens with a young woman waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up as this is the first time, he is taking her to meet his parents. As they reach the farm where his parents live, the boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) gives her a story of a maggot-infested pig. This grotesque welcome is followed by his parents receiving the young woman, but there is something not quite right about the house and especially Jake’s queer parents, who keep appearing in their younger and older selves. In between, shots of an old, bulky janitor busy in cleaning keep intervening the plot implying an underlying connection.
Review: You better not believe in your eyes, your ears, or whatever your mind tells you while watching ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’! This Charlie Kaufman piece of thriller plays mind games with you without letting you win it unless you have read the original novel, or you have a guidebook next to you. Very honestly, more than a review one would seek an explanation for this so-called horror-thriller, which apparently ends up being an inexplicable riddle!
What if I tell you, this film is not about the young woman at all! This film is about and only about the elderly janitor who hardly had a screen space of 20 minutes, and his imagination! Yes, dear folks! The young woman, her poems, her road ride to her boyfriend’s home, meeting their parents, the return journey, each episode is nothing but an illusion of a senile mind. Perhaps the old janitor fancied a young woman named Lucy in his salad days, perhaps she never became his, ever! The ballet sequences between Jake and Lucy’s doppelgangers reflect the janitor’s buried desires. It is possible that the janitor had been in more than one strained relationship - neither ideal parents nor an ideal life partner, his entire life has been like a trash can that has held all that is unwanted. His gesture of cleaning is his hope that is keeping him alive.
The way Kaufman has staged the final scene where Jake is receiving a Nobel Prize is commendable as it stealthily denotes the janitor aka Jake suffers from schizophrenia. Not many critics record this minute yet the most crucial act that unlocks the mystery of the cryptic storytelling. If you have watched Russell Crowe starrer ‘A Beautiful Mind’ where the actor dons the character of Nobel Laureate and mathematician John Nash; Crowe delivers an emotional speech at the Nobel Prize Ceremony scene. Addressing his wife who was in the audience then, the character declares, “You are the reason I am… you are all my reasons.” Nash, who was a patient of schizophrenia, paid his humble gratitude to his wife for her unparalleled contributions and sacrifices. Jake utters the same words with Lucy or the young woman in the audience clapping for her! This connection is so subtle that one cannot be blamed for overlooking it completely, however, the director wanted to keep it that way, for the real protagonist of the psychological thriller is disillusion, and disillusion alone!
‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ is a tedious watch, excessively dialogue-heavy, yet offers stellar performances. The ambiguous approach is deliberate as it was the director’s intent to make every viewer go through what a doddering mind goes through. The director has attained success in throwing all of us in this disillusioned expedition filled with blathering affairs, however, fails at conveying his perception to the tale, or maybe, that is a conscious ploy by Kaufman.
