I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

Film: I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

Stars: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The films of Charlie Kaufman are, for me, a mixed bag.  I saw Adaptation at likely too-young of an age (when we get to 2002 for the OVP, I'll be re-watching that to have a more recent understanding of the nominated performances), but overall I've only really liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which he did not direct).  His movies are too much of an intellectual exercise, and frequently are difficult to watch.  This occasionally makes me feel like I'm stupid, as obviously these are celebrated by cinephiles & it's perhaps a sign that I'm just not getting it.  Or, perhaps with I'm Thinking of Ending Things it's a case where we're forgiving one man's previous genius when he's giving us an absolute train-wreck of a movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film wanders quite a bit, and it's very difficult to sum up, so I'm going to try but I'll have to take some liberties.  There is a young woman (Buckley), initially called Lucy but eventually called other things throughout the movie, who is on a road trip to meet the parents of her boyfriend Jake (Plemons).  She is having doubts about whether she should stay with him or not, and is not happy about going on the trip but he is insistent.  When they get there, his parents behave in a bizarre way, with their moods alternating back-and-forth, and at first call Lucy by the wrong name.  As the night wears on, though, the parents start to age, to the point where they're clearly about to die, and Lucy's identity shifts.  She begins to not acknowledge that those around her change her name & occupation.  All of this happens with cuts to a lonely janitor cleaning a school, whom Lucy & Jake eventually meet on their ride home.  As the film closes, it becomes increasingly apparent that these figures (Lucy, Jake, and his parents) are an illusion, figments of the janitor's imagination on a night when he's going to kill himself, which it's heavily implied he does over the silent end credits.

Honestly-this is giving the film more credit than it deserves in terms of plot, and I'll admit that I had to read a synopsis of the book Kaufman based the film on in order to ascertain that Jake & Lucy were figments of the janitor's imagination (and I only include that part because it's the only logical read on the film in hindsight).  You don't get that from the film, and I don't think this is a case like Last Year at Marienbad or Celine & Julie Go Boating where the movie is simply above many people's heads...I think it's just a mess.

The movie doesn't establish enough in the final moments what's going on, and while it's apparent that we're meant to interpret Jake's (or the janitor's) obsession with film & books as part of the story, it's not  clear enough why we're getting references to Robert Zemeckis or A Beautiful Mind-these feel random & chaotic, and the movie doesn't establish why it's so cruel to its characters, its obsession with morbidity, and really give us a perspective on this wandering, potentially sociopathic janitor.  I honestly hated this movie-it was so gross & needlessly complicated (there was nothing to gain other than confusion from certain chapters, particularly the woman who worked at the ice cream shop).  I normally would refrain from giving a film like this one-star, because there are elements, like the acting & especially the cinematography, that I liked, and because I might be able to understand it better upon a repeat viewing, but I had such a visceral disgust to the picture that I'm giving it my worst grade.  The movie tries to be intellectual, but putting up haunting images and random pop culture references does not make a film high art because it looks like high art, and it is a movie that feels like it doesn't have a perspective, and if it does, it's one that's poorly executed.