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“And the sun flicks my eyes—
It was all a pack o’ lies!
I’m awake in a lonely room.

I ain’t gonna dream ’bout her arms no more!
I ain’t gonna leave her alone!
Goin’ outside,
Git myself a bride,
Git me a woman to call my own.”

–“Lonely Room,” Oklahoma!

DIRECTED BY: Charlie Kaufman

FEATURING: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd

PLOT: As a snowstorm approaches, a young woman travels for the first time with her boyfriend Jake to meet his parents, but inwardly she is struggling to work up the courage to end things between them. Strange things happen at Jake’s house: not only is his parent’s behavior awkward, but their ages change before her eyes. Meanwhile, the action frequently cuts to an elderly high school janitor as he makes his rounds; the third act will bring the couple into contact with him.

BACKGROUND:

• Based on Ian Reid’s 2016 psychological novel of the same name.
• An early prestige property for Netflix, who gave it a limited theatrical release in 2020 to qualify for awards season, then kept it locked into their exclusive streaming service.
• Several of the film’s monologues—including Buckley’s poem, her opinions on John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, and Plemmons’ “acceptance” speech— are lifted wholesale from other people’s writings (“Bonedog” by Eva HD, Pauline Kael’s review, and A Beautiful Mind‘s Nobel speech, respectively).
• The film-within-the-film, a romantic comedy credited to Robert Zemeckis, is fictional. (Zemeckis is thanked in the credits for allowing his name to be attached.)
• The end credits include a list of the various books, artworks, etc. referenced throughout the film.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: A cartoon pig leads a naked elderly man through the sterile hallways of a high school in the middle of the night. Bloody droplets drop from the animal’s underbelly, staining the newly-shined floor, as he plods along—maggots, he explains, as he is a maggot-infested pig.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Ice cream in a blizzard; animated maggot-ridden pig leads naked man to awards ceremony

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: This labyrinth of awkward interactions, faulty memories, and uncertain identities may just be Charlie Kaufman’s most surreal film.

Original trailer for I’m Thinking of Ending Things

COMMENTS: Someone should take a pencil and catalog how many different roles Jessie Buckley plays in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. She’s a postgrad student, apparently, but she may be studying neurology. Or gerontology. Or she may be a poet. Or a painter. Or a waitress. Or a film critic. Her memory may be foggy, but that doesn’t really explain how she seems to be an expert on any topic boyfriend Jake brings up in conversation—except the details of how they first met. She’s both polymath and shapeshifter. But the one thing she undoubtedly is, is the center of the movie (by the time she gave her killer Pauline Kael impression, complete with appearing-from-nowhere cigarette, Buckley has completely sold us). Buckley is, in a real way, Kaufman’s muse here, as much as Jesse Plemmons’ Jake wishes she would be his muse.

Although Buckley is the film’s center, she does not have to hold it all down on her own. Plemmons’ everyman persona is a perfect match for the enigma that is Jake. He begins as his girlfriend’s intellectual equal, and even as the more confident of the pair, but as she grows more assertive, his fundamental insecurities rise to the fore. The ensemble acting is exceptional throughout, best seen in the four-way sparring at the dinner table during the uncomfortable introduction of Jake’s parents. The cast’s individual expressions are priceless: Collette smiles and giggles to herself at private jokes only she can hear, churlish Thewlis becomes aggressively incredulous towards the idea that a landscape could appear sad, and Plemmons looks completely mortified by his parents’ strange behavior. (As I wrote in my initial review, Jake’s parents would creep out Henry Spencer‘s in-laws; dinner is a wonderful nightmare parody of the experience of meeting a significant others’ oddball parents for the first time).

Buckley’s character exists on (at least) two levels. Symbolically, she is an amalgam anima forged from many women, books, ideas, and ideals. But the model for the “real,” physical manifestation of the woman who stands before us briefly comes out when the janitor asks her “What does your boyfriend look like?” Buckley then describes a vastly different version of the inconsistent story she told Jake’s parents about her and Jake’s first meeting, one that contains the clue to unlocking the entire plot. If you’re confused, that speech should hopefully clear things up. (That is, if the double meaning implied in the title didn’t already have you heading down the correct path).

Kaufman has often seized on rare neurological conditions as ultra-high concept metaphors: Cotard’s syndrome (the delusion that one is already dead) in Synecdoche, New York, Fregoli syndrome (believing that strangers are actually the same person in disguise) in Anomalisa. But if any psychiatric malady is the inspiration here, it would be a prosaic case of suicidal depression. Which is not to say that the movie is inescapably miserabilist. The wide breadth of intellectual and artistic discourse that Buckley and Plemmons engage in throughout the film is invigorating and a reminder, as Jake muses, that “the world is larger than the inside of your own head.” And, although their fates may be pathetic, Kaufman clearly has compassion for his characters, and faith in the capacity of art to transform sadness into beauty. You may read some of the finale’s epigrams in the as mere platitudes (particularly Jake’s hollow and cribbed final speech), but there is an inescapable truth in the line “There is kindness in the world, after all. You have to search for it, but its there.” Even though the sentiment is delivered by a hallucinated pig, it’s still inescapably accurate. And a helpful reminder that what real kindness there is in the world exists only outside the cage of your own head.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“If that sounds confusing, or even downright hostile to the audience, well, that describes the Charlie Kaufman experience… There’s a weird thrill to getting lost inside this movie, only so you can study every odd detail from new angles, over and over again.”–David Sims, The Atlantic (contemporaneous)

“The film has a weird, ghostly, even beautiful pull, but it functions mostly on theoretical terms because Kaufman has thought it to death, lingering only on his characters’ miseries and disappointments.”–Chuck Bowen, Slant (contemporaneous)

IMDB LINK: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Read Charlie Kaufman’s ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Script – The screenplay, as provided to Variety

Charlie Kaufman’s Guide to ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’: The Director Explains Its Mysteries – If you’re still confused by the film, the director’s comments to Indiewire may help

Can someone please explain what is happening in “I’m thinking of ending things” (2020)? – A long reddit thread of fan theories and opinions about the movie (spoilers aplenty)

I’m Thinking of Ending Things reviewed by Mark Kermode – Kermode reviews the film (comparing it unfavorably to the novel)

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS (2020) – this site’s original Apocrypha Candidate review

HOME VIDEO INFO: It will be a long, long time before Netflix relinquishes its monopoly on I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

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