I’m Thinking of Ending Things Review
Based on the Iain Reid book of the same name, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a total mood and is about as insane and cerebral as a Charlie Kaufman film can get. We follow an exhausted couple (Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons) on the road to meet the guy’s parents. She’s thinking of ending things and he most likely thinks the same but doesn’t quite know it yet at that point. We eventually meet an almost unrecognizable Toni Collette and David Thewlis as the aforementioned parents and things aren’t quite right.
I love how confident and specific Charlie Kaufman is in his direction as it physically matches the arc of its narrative. It starts off colourful and near the end it’s dark and hostile. Jessie Buckley’s character also ends up wearing a dark blue coat in contrast to her red one in the beginning. The camera and dialogue at times move ahead of the characters and things are just slightly off sync. Someone will speak or be in the middle of an internal monologue just to be interrupted in a way that seems supernatural. This all plays beautifully with the main casts’ unhinged performances with Plemons and Buckley going back between sardonic and cordial. It feels like a condensed and surreal version of Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage where a relationship is brutally dissected and accelerated through different time periods and versions of themselves. It’s a blunt portrayal of one’s loss of identity when one’s been in a corrosive unit for an indefinite amount of time. You’re sick of them and they’re sick of themselves, and you’re sick of them sick of themselves.
It’s obviously not a movie for everyone and would be a hard skip if you’re not looking for something that’s primarily made up of two unlikable people in a car quoting literature and doing mundane shitty-couple stuff. There are a lot of things that I’m still trying to figure out and it’s a fascinating piece of work indeed by one of the most unique writer/directors.