New Release Review – I’m Thinking of Ending Things

From constant purveyor of bizarre Charlie Kaufman comes his latest surreal quasi-comedy-or-drama, I’m Thinking of Ending Things. If you’ve seen Kaufman’s work before, you know how crazy his stuff can get. And I’m Thinking of Ending Things is not an exception.

The basic plot is that a woman (Jessie Buckley) is going with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his parent’s house, while she’s having doubts about their so-far brief relationship. What follows are events that I won’t spoil, but I surely did not predict in any way, and a ton of commentary on psychology, existence and universality.

From what I could only try to interpret from the film, the main theme is that of human suppression of insecurity or doubt, leading to a life which is fractured and unstructured. It constantly cycles through the generations, leaving new lives blessed with old problems and exacerbating it until someone has the courage to say “no” and move on.

It’s something which would explain the deliberately incoherent editing, clothing continuity errors which are too obvious to not be deliberate, motifs of old mixed with new and the seemingly perfect households hiding tension and anger beneath. Beyond that…this movie is really damn challenging, I will admit.

Part of the reason it’s so challenging is how patient it demands the audience to be. Often scenes will be intercut that won’t really receive an explanation or context until way into the movie, and many other scenes are just Buckley and Plemons in a car, discussing poetry and other topics for a really long time. This makes it easy to miss potential motifs or ideas that the movie introduces, or in some cases made me look for some that weren’t there (I tried to look for orange and pink in the movie to explain why Buckley’s jacket kept changing the colour of its stripes, but nothing came up that was useful.)

I feel it too, Jesse.

Sometimes, such as with the car scenes, this can get a bit overbearing, as the dialogue is sometimes a bit too heavy-handed with what the material demands. There’s also the fact that, whether or not this was a deliberate choice, Buckley and Plemons lack a ton of chemistry, which results in potential great scenes for character building being rendered kind of boring. But mostly, I found myself quite intrigued by what was going on, thinking I was guessing the themes early and being quite surprised as to where the movie took me.

In terms of technical aspects, Kaufman once again nails his distinct imagination on screen as he had done with Synecdoche, New York. The 4:3 cinematography from two-time Oscar nominee Łukasz Żal is starkly beautiful and often quite claustrophobic due to the thick colour scheme present in the production design. The framing of shots are also trying to resemble a horror movie at points, trapping images in mirrors or shooting through windows. I was also really impressed by the (majority of) makeup effects turning everybody old, which I didn’t see coming, but thankfully didn’t remind me of turtles.

As I said earlier, the editing is deliberately trying to convey that sense of incoherence and unfulfillment in the audience as a result of character insecurity. As a result, there are often deliberate continuity errors (although I think I noticed an actual error at one point, because not even Stanley Kubrick would be so meticulous as to put an error in the amount of corn eaten) and uncomfortable framing of shots which work really well in establishing an atmosphere. The sound design is also trying to convey this, often abruptly cutting and going full blast in the audio channels at points, and it’s mostly effective aside from the car scenes. In those, sometimes there are bizarre Foley effects which would just not occur in the middle of a windstorm, and I did notice a couple of moments of poor ADR (automated dialogue replacement) and lip-syncing.

The best part of this movie is easily the casting. Jessie Buckley is really great in the leading role, selling her character’s confusion and sadness really well, and Jesse Plemons has some pretty great moments. The standout in this movie was a surprise David Thewlis as Plemons’s dad, stumbling about and muttering in a British accent about people f^cking on his kid’s bed in a role which could possibly be a Best Supporting Actor-worthy performance. Toni Collette, who I normally adore, is once again great in this film, and character actor Guy Boyd finally gets his spotlight as a janitor the movie keeps randomly cutting to. They are the best part of a challenging, sometimes frustratingly so, but often satisfying movie.

Is this the best movie of 2020? No. But it’s still worth a watch for how it handles its themes of insecurity and the strong direction of Charlie Kaufman. I’m going to give I’m Thinking of Ending Things a

B+.