There is a moment in I’m Thinking of Ending Things when Jake, played by Jesse Plemmons, recounts a story about a time when the pigs on his family’s farmhouse had to be put down. They had been lying down in the corner of their pen for several days, and when he finally decided to investigate he noticed their undersides covered in maggots, eating them alive. This sense of slowly rotting away pervades the film, as its title is repeated through the internal narration of our protagonist.
“Our protagonist”. Perhaps that is a poor use of the term. What was her name again? Lucy? Louisa? Ames? Is she a poet, a quantum physicist, or a painter? While we do spend most the film with her, we gain little insight into the specifics of her character. In fact we discover far more about another who we see significantly less of – a janitor with a love for the musical Oklahoma, sentimental Robert Zemeckis films, and Tulsey Town, an ice cream store seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of the Young Woman, as she is credited, can be deceiving. Though her defining characteristics change on a whim, she inhabits each role she is given with a downbeat conviction, often passing over the inconsistencies in her identity while perceiving those present in her shifting environment. At first Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay evades easy understanding, with a certain musical non-sequitur not at all helping the effort. But the full impact of his vision can’t be felt so much in individual scenes than in weighing up the entire film post-viewing. It is through the intertwining of conflicting styles and inferences that Kaufman creates an absurdist reflection on regrets over unfulfilled potential.
There is formal precision in the editing of these styles, as the geometry of separate shots often line up between the Young Woman and the Janitor’s parallel storylines. Match cuts between these images imply some sort of metaphysical connection between the two, yet the particulars of this are mostly kept vague, even when Kaufman finally gives us answers.
The most apparent similarity between the Janitor and the Young Woman is the disassociation they feel from their physical surroundings; the Janitor as a subject of ridicule in the high school he works at, and the Young Woman as an outsider in her boyfriend’s parents’ home. These scenes that take place between her and the family are some of the most suspenseful in the film, with performances from Toni Collette and David Thewlis as the highly-strung, socially awkward parents continuously shifting the atmosphere in all sorts of off-kilter directions. Collette will go from laughing hysterically to breaking down in a heartbeat, as Thewlis sleazily leers at his guest and proudly asserts his lack of emotional intelligence.
It is a little disappointing when the Young Woman and Jake leave the parents and the farmhouse, as we give up beautifully composed images and disturbing performances for a lengthy car ride in complete darkness. Though this may be the film’s visual low point, Kaufman’s screenplay takes an analytical turn as the young couple engage in an argument over A Woman Under the Influence, a film that is itself about a woman whose self-image is pulled in conflicting directions by the gendered expectations forced upon her.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things doesn’t provide easy answers to its mysteries, yet even if one was content to leave these unsolved it works just as effectively as a melancholy tone poem, ruminating over the shaky memories that pass through one’s mind at the end of their life. In the past, Charlie Kaufman has often worked better as a screenwriter under the guidance of a director, but here he finds a way to express his wild imagination through cinematic elements that, while often seeming disparate, cohere under his broadly existential vision.
