i’m thinking of ending things Review: An Incoherent and a Perplexing Ride to Nowhere!

With under 130 minutes of dialogue, ideas, clues, and philosophies on life, inner feelings, and beyond that are open-ended for us to decode the new Charlie Kaufman’s Netflix Original film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a weirdly captivating ride to put it mildly. Interesting, because of the fact I was trying to interpret everything that is happening on-screen, only to conclude that my brain does not operate to the level Kaufman wants it to.

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Starring Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons in the lead roles, I’m Thinking of Ending Things opens with Lucy and Jake beginning a road trip together to join his parents for dinner on a blizzard-heavy day at their farm. Almost of the full length during their awkward car ride, Lucy speaks to herself of ending her seven-week-old relationship with Jake citing several reasons for what she likes and does not like him. However, once they reach their destination on a gloomy day, things start to operate in a completely opposite direction as the word ‘normal’ gets booted out from this planet and ‘perplexity’ serves as the centerpiece for everything materializing in the narrative.

My favorite type of movies were always the ones that try to elicit potent emotions from the beginning till the end. The ones that manage to stay with me for a day or two irrespective of the final outcome be it entirely good or downright atrocious. And although I tend to prefer quality films over the inferior ones, sometimes from the pits of insanity and disarray as deep as the Mariana Trench, a weird movie washes up to the shore, which is neither good, bad, nor boring.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things falls into that same category where you cannot remotely understand the intent, morale, and the meaning of the narrative even to the slightest bit. Kaufman leaves us to understand the real significance of the story by leaving separate trails of breadcrumbs that lead to different endings. Whether the entire narrative is a particular character’s imagination, a recap of sorts, of all their regretful memories, and the faulty decisions that he/she took in their life.

Perhaps it is an extreme case of multiple personality disorder where there is only one primary character in the film, and the others are him/her in distinctive forms. Or it can simply be the writer’s commentary and viewpoints at several things in life and his concern about the ruthless and grim era or society we live in.

The perplexity of I’m Thinking of Ending Things from start to finish is primarily attributable to the Kaufman’s outlandish screenwriting technique. Right from the jump, the movie cuts between two stories with minimal to zero build-up, holding no coherent value and as a result, I just felt like watching a distant dreary drama where it’s all about the journey and not the destination. Moreover, even though the storyline, presented in four large fixings, was freakishly strange for the most part, particularly the entire time at Jake’s parent’s farm, the lack of a proper pay-off did not do many favors to the muddled script and the narrative structure.

And the total obscurity continues to also spread between the characters as the family dynamic, the relationship dynamic between the leads makes no sense as there is no thought to why they walk, talk, and stalk in a very peculiar way. Furthermore, the whole genre-bending aspect of the film by combining elements of horror, romance, and psychological drama did not offer any intrigue as it muddled things up even further, which is too much at this point.

However, on the brighter side of things, the performances from the entire cast were stellar through and through. Jessie Buckley excellently enacted her role as a woman with a head full of thoughts, questions, and emotions that she is unable to portray at the right moment. Her ability to sell us the unconventionality of the story worked out pretty well, and Jesse Plemons as her partner succeeded in portraying his puzzling character who snaps and loses control in the most ordinary conditions.

Toni Collette once again proves that she is the absolute best when it comes to performing these total awkward characters and steals the show for the second time in yet another legendary dinner table scene, which is more on the lines of what we’ve previously seen in Hereditary.

Also, the production design suited the film’s tone as the color palette cinematographer Łukasz Å»al chose to use blended with the dark, dull, moody, depressing, and the bewildering nature of the film. And the tight 4:3 aspect ratio that allowed me to stay awake for the entirety of the film also added to the entire bizarre universe this tale existed in.

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Overall, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is not an effortless movie to watch through on a single sitting. It requires your complete attention and is more detail-oriented as even the dialogues felt like long, never-ending poems. However, although the tone of the movie was predominantly captivating, the narrative is a bummer mainly because its non-coherent structure did not have a proper conclusion and is left open to drift in any direction that depends on the level of intellect that our brains possess. I’m sure the only person who completely understood what this movie is going for is Charlie Kaufman himself, and anyone else who is pretending that they did are lying.

Rating – 2/5 | Grade – C

Images via Netflix

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