Charlie Kaufman is back and at his existential best as Netflix finally gives us something to chew on.
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS
(Dir: Charlie Kaufman | Time: 2h14mins | Release: Sept 4th | On: Netflix)
As hard as it is to explain a Charlie Kaufman movie, it may be almost harder not to spoil it. Although they are tricky to pin down, his works are best experienced with a fresh mind.
We can safely say that I’m Thinking of Ending Things is whimsical, bleak and surreal, and that it deals with mortality, love and insecurity. If you know his films, you will already know that, and chances are you will want to watch this no matter what I write. Go right ahead — it is not for everyone, but it is extremely good.
If his name doesn’t immediately jump out at you: Kaufman wrote the mind-bending cult hits Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Like them, I’m Thinking of Ending Things creates a compelling intrigue while it plays with our perception of reality and time. But here the work is more subtle; the result, more suffocating.
And it starts almost from the first minute.
Lucy (Jessie Buckley) is a bright neurology student being driven by boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to meet his farmer parents for the first time. He may be awkward and appear rough, but he is well-read and thoughtful.
Yet not all is what it seems or even what it was just a few minutes earlier.
Having been together for only a month — or was it seven weeks, she doesn’t quite remember — Luisa is a little unsure about the trip. It is snowing hard, she has papers due tomorrow… and she is thinking of ending things with Jake.
Her mind wonders into deep thought in the lulls in their conversations, which shift wildly from tense to fun, then back again. Why does that abandoned old house on the roadside have a shiny new set of swings?
As he drives, she is ignoring calls from her friend, Lucy, and she is thinking of ending things. And, somehow, he seems to know it.
At the family farmhouse, there is an air of death and mystery while the snowstorm intensifies outside. Jake acts childishly around his congenial but increasingly odd parents (David Thewlis and Toni Collette). His engaging dad asks Lucia about her quantum physics studies, but did he look a little older a second ago? And why can’t she quite remember how they met?
She is still thinking of ending things — she thinks — but first she, and we, must get through this trip.
With clever slights of hand, the film lays out a constantly shifting puzzle that starts just beneath the surface. Conversations appear to loop, objects seem to mutate. Aided by immersive visuals, the exceptional cast keep your attention glued as the set-up becomes stranger and more claustrophobic. Who are we really watching here?
The scenery is harsh and the themes are dark, on the edge of existentialist horror, but there is brilliance and a playfulness in the mystery. The conversations often drift into overt references — writers, films, poems, Freud. Are they breadcrumbs or red herrings? Are they even real? This being Netflix, you could even pause, google, interpret; a lover of toying with the rules of films, that conceivably could have been in Kaufman’s mind.
Whereas his expansive directorial debut Synechdoche, NY, pushed the viewer away with its postmodern weirdness, this feels intimate and rewarding. But the journey is still wild, nightmarish and, as you would expect, an utterly subjective one. You may, like me, want to rewatch it immediately. Or you may need to go for a walk in the sunshine.
Either way, after this summer’s derivative blockbuster-replacement fodder like The Old Guard and Project Power, it’s a very welcome return to Roma-esque ambitions by Netflix.
Verdict: Bold, bleak and brilliant. 8/10
MS.