‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Review: Charlie Kaufman’s Latest is a Captivatingly Cold Wonderland
Netflix explorers: Keep your minds open and your jackets on. It’s gonna get chilly.
Charlie Kaufman, everyone’s favorite emperor of existential crises is back with the Netflix release of his latest film, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”; and this time, he takes no prisoners. Perhaps the most philosophically and intellectually difficult films of his career, Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a brilliantly cold undertaking that will leave the general audiences polarized and frozen. Based on Iain Reid’s novel of the same title, the film marks the auteur’s first return to screen adaptation since, well, “Adaptation” in 2002. Flash forward eighteen years later, and with Kaufman’s work having evolved in it’s precision and self-awareness, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is Kaufman expertly riffing on himself. It is an effortless showcase of cinematic puppetry elevated to stratospheric (sometimes unreachable) heights. And though the journey may be understandably treacherous for some audiences, there are plenty of gems and moments along the way to keep the film’s mysteries worth the ride.
Similarly to the novel, Kaufman’s adaptation of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is crafted around a young woman (Jessie Buckley) who is traveling with her boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemmons), for a meet-the-family dinner with his parents (played by cinematic titans Toni Collette and David Thewlis.) The couple have only been dating for six weeks. This is going to be rough. During their snowy, wandering road trip, the weather inside and outside of the car is blisteringly cold. As the journey to and from Jake’s childhood home snowballs forward, the film and its characters become entangled in situations and conversations that expand into a tantalizingly bizarre third act that will catch everyone, even Kaufman junkies, off guard. The writer/director’s work has always been rooted in deep surrealism, but with “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, the well goes deep and never runs dry. This new film is overflowing with and abundance of details, double takes, and jaw-drops that may be just enough keep people intrigued and engaged.
Though the film is a behemoth of complexities, it still feels as if we’ve been put in good hands. The script is one of the most colorful, bleak, inventive, and hilarious writing that has ever come from Kaufman, and its ability to keep you interested and longing for more is truly spectacular. Through Jessie Buckley’s masterfully narrated internal monologue, we come to understand that all she wants to do is end things with her boyfriend. Multiple times throughout the film, we almost get the satisfaction of a title drop from our girlfriend protagonist, but every time the words want to come out, she is interrupted by Jake, oblivious to her discomfort. It has to happen at some point… Right? Though freezing to the touch, the joy of the film is in the little clues spread throughout, the changing wallpapers and costumes, and the hunt for answers. Luckily, it’s a hunt that audiences don’t have to go through on their own.
As our spirit guides through this wintery world, both Buckley and Plemmons give career bests. Buckley, even though her character has no name, approaches the girlfriend with an openness and investigative nature that commands every scene. Especially in a role such as this, where because of the shifts in mood and genre and story are so abrupt, her ability to adapt and mimic are fully on display. Faced with voiceover, some difficult lyrical monologues, and a moment that can only be described as an impressions the brainchild between Pauline Kael and Gena Rowlands, Buckley hits a home run with every syllable and glance.
Plemmons, on the other hand, completely encapsulates Kaufman’s trademark womanizer wannabe. His Jake is a character who Plemmons delves into with a palpable frustration that can only be cured by a heathy dose of mansplaining. He is a quiet voice with a loud pain, and the subtlety of his performance is quite a sight to behold. As for Jake’s parents, David Thewlis, who Kaufman fans will recognize from “Anomalisa”, is as wonderfully dreary as ever as Jake’s get-to-the-point father, and it goes without saying that if you give Toni Collette a dinner table, she’ll give you the world.
The specificity that these actors bring to the film is also coupled with the precision of the Łukasz Żal’s frigid cinematography and Jay Wadley’s crescendoing score. Snow is photographed is as almost a kind of television static makes a third character out of the environment, and the plucky, balladic score intertwines perfectly with the film’s themes of familiarity, memory, fluidity, and loss. All these elements culminate at a single point as the film culminates in a gloomy, glamorous, and unpredictable conclusion. The production design and costumes are also key elements that further the film’s eerie recognizability. For all the wonderful formal qualities, maybe the best quality of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is its refusal to be anything other than itself. After Kaufman’s previous film, “Anomalisa”, garnered critical praise amidst an abysmal box office, this feels like a response to an auteur looking back to re-navigate, re-contextualize, and relearn from where he may have gone astray. What we are watching is Kaufman processing ideas in real time, unrestricted.
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is perhaps Kaufman’s most personal film— not in the biographical sense, but in a deeply intellectual one. Almost as if he has written this in a diary under lock and key. And though it may be considered a “this is weird what’s up next” moment to some Netflix browsers, to peer this deeply into the mind of one of the most creatively singular writers of our time is absolutely compelling. This is a film that demands your attention one, two, or maybe even three times, and by no means is it an easy car ride to be in. It’s full of unsettling (sometimes even terrifying) awkwardness, claustrophobic scenes of monologues flowing like waterfalls, and a never-ending lingering of dread. However, with horror comes humor; where there are words, there is truth; where there is dread there is humanity; and where there is a dinner table, there is Toni Collette.