I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

 'I'm Thinking of Ending Things' is based on a 2016 novel of the same name by the Canadian writer Iain Reid. Not being familiar with the source material it's hard to say how much of it carried over to this film, as it is both directed and adapted by Charlie Kaufman who is also responsible for the extremely lose adaption of Susan Orlean's book 'The Orchid Thief', which became the meta textual film 'Adaption'.

Questions of identity being so central to Kaufman's work the question of what, or even who this movie is about it left on the table and kind of hard to explain. On the surface level it is about a young couple Lucy (Jessie Buckley) who does most of the narrating and Jake (Jesse Plemons) who takes her to meet his farm based parents one winterly Oklahoma day. Their story contains deliberate inconsistences, even down to Buckley's characters name, which isn't always Lucy, and the health and age of Jakes parents which fluctuate wildly (they are played in all versions by Toni Collette, and David Thewlis). 

The parents seem like nice enough people, but they are odd, Jake is odd too, increasingly so as things progress. It's an awkward visit and only seems to feed Lucy's premonition that the relationship is doomed, it's one of the first thing she tells us as the film begins, that she's thinking of ending things. 

The movie tends to play its scenes long and awkward, it's certainly stylized but there is also an enhanced sense of truthfulness to some of these conversations. They go on unfocused in a way normal conversations often do, this is not Sorkian oratory, it feels real. 

While this narrative goes on we take occasional flashes to an overweight high school janitor of late middle age, Lucy even meets him towards the end of the film when our couple stop at Jake's old rural high school, in part because of storm conditions. This character revels, to the extent that anything can really be said to be spelled out in this film, why there has been so many inconsistencies, and why certain themes and subject matters are so frequently returned to in the story line. There's a lot I could say about this, I think it's kind of brilliant and very Kaufman. 

This film, unexpectedly, contains a rather beautifully choreographed ballet number, reminiscent of Powell and Pressberger's 'The Red Shoe's', there is a lot of film homage in this film. A melancholy piece I found I connected with it a lot, and it wasn't always comfortable. A movie I very much intend to revisit. ***1/2