I'm Thinking of Ending Things Review

She's thinking of ending things. Her name is Lucy - or is it Louisa? Amy? That doesn't sound right. Whatever her name is, she's thinking of ending things. She's studying at a university, but she looks much older than that. She's a poet and a painter, and she's studying quantum physics and gerontology. Her identity seems to shift over time, and she seems painfully aware of it. Her relationship with her boyfriend of 7 weeks, Jake, has gone sour. Or is it? She's not sure. He's a nice guy, he's good for her, but something is just profoundly wrong between them. She's not sure how, but she knows this romance is going nowhere, and that it's best to break it off now.

Despite her misgivings, she agrees to go on a road trip with him to meet his parents. It's time, after all; they've been together for such a long time. It's been 7 weeks, but it feels like... so long. They drive up in the middle of a snow storm to meet Jake's parents who live in a barn in the middle of nowhere. Something is just... so wrong with this family. It's not just that the relationship between them and Jake seems... strained, though that's certainly part of it. Nothing adds up, and the night quickly devolves into a surreal, unsettling experience.

Lucy spends quite a lot of time trying to convince Jake that they need to leave, and when they finally do, they spend a very long car ride through a vicious blizzard discussing all number of things, from existential fears to media to the non-trademarked equivalent of Dairy Queen's blizzards. The ride ends as Jake takes a detour against Louisa's will to his old high school, and from there the plot departs from any semblance of logic.

It may sound like I'm spoiling the film for you, but I'm really not. There are essentially four scenes - with some subdivisions between them - that make up this entire two and a half hour film: the car ride to Jake's farm, visiting with his parents, the car ride back, and the final act at the high school. Perhaps this sounds boring to you, and it very well might be, but Charlie Kaufman's newest film is one in which the details that string these scenes together are the most important part. These details turn a bare bones plot into something that is simultaneously incredibly dense and also... surprisingly straightforward in spite of that.

Throughout his career, Charlie Kaufman has made his name writing and directing innovative, solipsistic meta-commentaries on the nature of film, the self, masculinity, and interpersonal relationships. As the years go by, his films have become increasingly darker and more tortured, but even from his earlier classics (such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) we can see that they all revolve around a protagonist - usually a man - and their fractured minds personified in the world around them. I'm Thinking of Ending Things has been talked about as a sort of first time foray into the horror genre for Kaufman, but I very much disagree that this is any more of a horror film than something like Anomalisa, which used uncanny stop motion animation to externalized the haunted world of a man who seems to some degree to be convinced that he is the only real person on earth.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things does represent a departure in that it grounds itself in the thought process of a woman rather than a man - though in truth, the man is still just as important in subtle ways, if not more so. Both Lucy and Jake are incredibly troubled people. Jake is an everyman in some senses, but one who is tormented by how bland he is. His entire worldview seems to be shaped by the media he surrounds himself with, to the point that any scene in which he plays a large role is constantly peppered with references and direct allusions to various films, essays, poems and philosophic works from contemporary art history. Amy, on the other hand, is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She spaces off, constantly stuck in her own head, thinking about the nature of life, death, existence, time, and whether or not she's thinking of ending things with Jake, and when the best time to do that would be.

The first half of the film sees Louisa in a terrible downward spiral of existential depression and anxiety, one that colors every aspect of her visit with Jake's parents, and one that is equally informed by the strange events ongoing around her. It's difficult to really talk about much of the specifics in this story because it is the details that really make this film, and talking too much about any specific scene could bring us straight into spoiler territory. But this part of the film legitimately both disturbed me and resonated with me. It felt like an externalization of the existential panics that have plagued me throughout the last two years; about life, death, aging and identity. The monologues that go through her head, filling most of the film's runtime, are very reminiscent of the exact same things I thought about during my own personal ruminations.

The second half of the film focuses more on Jake, but in somewhat of a subtle way, still mostly grounded through Lucy's point of view - but where exactly does her point of view end and Jake's begin? Jake is lonely and inconfident and insecure, and he seems to believe that all he needs is a woman to back him up to be happy. But the film seems to be actively denying that, and only partly because this is rooted in misogynistic thinking (though make no mistake; Louisa has read up on her feminist theory, and is very unhappy at any sense of autonomy being stripped away from her). For all of his attempts to position Amy as his partner, she is constantly pulling away from him, rebuking his attempts to close the gap between them. It's unsure if that gap can ever be closed; as long as there is the concept of two separate people as two separate entities, perhaps one can never truly be with another, and there will always be some amount of dead space between one individual and the next. In the end, we're all alone... or are we maybe just all the same conscious taking different faces? Perhaps the very act of treating each other like we're all inherently different is the cause for loneliness in the first place.

There's so much to dissect in this film and it's a truly uncomfortable experience throughout. I haven't even dug into the incredibly dense amount of references and allusions to other works of art and fiction, and the way in which they seem to make up the plastic, artificial tapestry of Jake and Lucy's relationship. I haven't talked in depth about the fear of aging, the subtle applications of quantum physics, or the touches of Lynch-esque surrealism that permeate the runtime, culminating in one of the most befuddling endings of the year. It's impressive how much substance is crammed into this work; so much so that I'm not entirely unsure that it doesn't qualify as overstuffed. Ultimately, though, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is about the subtle yet profound horror present in our everyday lives, the discomfort and fear that the mere act of existing and connecting with other people can bring about. It's a film that's difficult to wrap one's head around and even harder to categorize - or even form an opinion of, really. I've thought for two days about whether I like this film, and I'm not sure I know the answer even now. It's brilliant, disturbing and challenging, but also befuddling, frustrating and perhaps slightly too full of itself when it comes to the referential bits.

Certainly, I'm Thinking of Ending Things isn't for everyone - I normally love uncomfortable works of surrealism like this and even I'm still trying to figure out of this was "for me." But it's definitely something that's kept my brain turning, both dissecting the film itself but also the ways in which it affected me and spoke to real life fears that I have. There were moments that I was bored, but also moments where I felt as if the film was driving me to a breakdown over some existential realization, imagined or not. I'll wager that most people won't enjoy this film, but for those who are legitimately looking for challenging, thought-provoking cinema that shatters the norms of Western storytelling, this is one you should definitely look into, even if it does wind up more frustrating than profound.