Charlie Kaufman makes odd movies. As a screenwriter, I first noticed his work with Being John Malkovich and he cemented that image for me with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. About the only thing you can say for certain with a movie from Kaufman, even now as he’s moved behind the camera to direct, is that whatever you are watching from him will probably not be anything like what you think it is.
And now on Netflix, we have a new one titled I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
At first glance, the movie is about a young woman played by Jessie Buckley. She’s getting ready to take a trip out of the city with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to the farm he grew up on to have dinner with his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). The woman is narrating the events, mostly about how she’s thinking of ending things (suicide?), how Jake is nice but she doesn’t see the relationship going much further, and she isn’t sure about a whole lot of things going on in her life.
That is the easiest way there is to describe what’s going on in her head. Jake seems to be a working class guy who loves poetry and film criticism. Nice, but sometimes intense, he’s a little odd, but this is a Kaufman movie so the audience should somewhat expect the characters to be a little odd. Especially as, while all the drama with the young woman is going on, we get flashes of an older janitor working at a high school.
Kaufman’s movie, like much of his best work, requires the audience to pay attention to what’s going on. I’m reluctant to say a whole lot because I don’t know what would or wouldn’t constitute a spoiler for a movie like this. The old janitor’s story (such as it is) as well as the young woman’s general wariness does come together in the end for a truly bizarre ending that does clarify much of what the audience has been seeing in a very Kaufmanesque manner. I’m Thinking of Ending Things isn’t the sort of movie a viewer “gets” on a first viewing. It’s the sort that will almost certainly reveal new layers on various rewatches, and that’s unlikely to attract a more mainstream audience. Once again, audiences are given a look into the mind of Charlie Kaufman. It may not be something most people will want to see or even comprehend, but it’s a look inside all the same for one of the more creative filmmakers working today.
Grade: B+
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