2020 In Review: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

The most "Charlie Kaufman" Charlie Kaufman movie ever made, whether we want it or not

*Jeopardy Final Round*

Q: I’m Thinking of Ghost Pigs
A: What is Charlie Kaufman

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Writer-director Charlie Kaufman is a master of his genre which could be dubbed as "bizarre dramedy" (at best), but he could also be described as a psychological romance writer, with nearly all of his work subjecting helplessly depressed protagonists to a deeply transformative experience through the eyes of another character or situation they literally romanticize with; a tangible representation of what the protagonist desires, be it a person they love or a passion in which they linger. Kaufamn masquerades these storytelling techniques with quirky dialogue and off-beat comical situations that feel ripped from a dreamy indie filmmaker, but with third acts that often trickle into unexpected finales, which has solidified him as a modern day screenwriting genius of unique (not to mention darkly comedic) narrative.

Even Kaufman’s more eccentric psychological experiments up until this point have felt congruent in a standard three-act story telling structure, no matter how strange the visual cues are, or how irrelevant some of the plot designs may be. As genuinely deep Kaufman dreams inside the mind of Joel in Eternal Sunshine, he crawls even more literally inside the mind of John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich, and yet stories like these as intentionally bizarre and outlandish they may be, still find our hopelessly relatable characters into an ending that brings the psychological story full circle, even if that circle veers off into an unfashionable hexagon along the way. It’s the very element which allows Kaufman’s creative abilities to know no bounds, and provide enough uniform in signature style for audiences to be able to package all of his films into a Charlie Kaufman lunchbox of comically weird and psychologically romantic films... that is until now.

Folks, do not disregard the puppetry of Synecdoche New York, or Nicolas Cage playing twins in Adaptation when reflecting on the boundless limits of strange happenings when it comes to Kaufman’s films, but I’m Thinking of Ending Things just might take the cake when it comes to a timeless farmhouse of unexpected story telling.

The plot is the plot: Lucy, Louisa, or as credited "Young Woman" (Jessie Buckley) takes a winter drive with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents for the first time, while internally monologuing that she’s thinking of ending things, seemingly her relationship, and as time may or may not pass (time eventually becomes irrelevant) shit gets real weird.

The rest is up for debate in both unpacking every singular frame of the film in embedding some hidden meaning, or leaving this thing alone as what will undoubtedly be the most ambiguous and abstract film of 2020, for better or worse. There’s so much to be said about Ending Things, and yet nothing at all. 

From the near half-hour car ride in a fierce blizzard to the awkward candle lit dinner with Jake’s parents (played to charmingly demented perfection by Toni Collette and David Thewlis), the film slowly drags its audience through the problematic horrors of a doomed relationship, which plays out like an elongated dream (or often an ambiguous nightmare) where Jake's family home sits like a carnival of warm and fuzzy terrors. From every family picture frame of the house to the halls of an old high school, Jake’s past and present become entangled in a hypnotic web of deceiving illusions, and from Lucy's point of view not a single frame of Kaufman's film can be trusted (it gets very meta).

Being that so much of Ending Things is embedded in the notion of memories, much of the story is left in an ambiguous state as characters' names change at will, and production design transforms merely between shots. It may feel like the film is filled with continuity errors, but it eventually unravels itself as an artistic perspective of misremembering the past just as much as Lucy's inner monologues unravel this as "a breakup movie" (in which the madness become far too strange to be labeled anything as such).

As intimately dark a perspective on toxic relationships as it is a bleak comedy about the misery of life, I'm Thinking of Ending Things often feels like Kaufman's senior thesis; a swan song of the depressed protagonist. In a way it feels like Kaufman's been building his career to this very moment: an eerily personal commentary on dating which threatens its genre into going full blown horror, but not before it becomes a musical for a moment before bowing out as a metaphor on reflecting upon life and all its beautiful and terrible disappointments. In short, it's a Charlie Kaufman film alright.

Strange, dark, comedic, and often frighteningly nihilistic, of course Ending Things is a little too ambitious, but Kaufman weaves his head-scratching thriller into a moody, dream-like ballet, leaving us with what is undoubtedly the strangest and most hauntingly perplexing film of the man’s resume to date. Or it could be a bloated, pretentious, confusing piece of tripe. It really all depends on the perspective; crappy, high-school stage play makeup, and all. You be the judge.

Grade: A-