Stream It Or Skip It: ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ on Netflix, Charlie Kaufman’s Latest Brain-Bender

Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things arrives on Netflix, and. I didn’t finish that sentence because I write in the spirit of the film, which tends to end its sentences abruptly or allow them to go on and on and on, metaphorically speaking of course, I think. The director wrote Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, classics all, and directed and wrote Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa, and each of these insular and emotional and wild films tend to contort reality to its breaking point. His work is either deeply frustrating or fascinating, possibly depending on whether you stare into your navel and see the universe or just a couple wads of lint. This new film aims to say everything about everything, or nothing about everything, or everything about nothing or nothing about nothing, I dunno, you tell me.

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Let’s start with who these people are right now, I believe. Jessie Buckley is Lucy and Jesse Plemons is Jake, and I’m guessing they’re 30-ish only because that’s how old the actors are, and probably because they exhibit some attributes of youth (they met in a bar during trivia night) and wisdom (they show significant capacity for self-reflection). She’s a poet and/or a waitress and/or a gerontologist and/or a student of veterinary medicine and/or quantum physics, depending on when you ask and who, and by “when,” I mean possibly alternate timelines or dreams or hallucinations, and by “who” I mean Lucy is sometimes called Lucia or Luisa (the credits just call her “The Young Woman”), and each wears slightly different clothing and hairstyles. Jake is always just Jake, though.

Anyway, Lucy and Jake have been dating for several weeks, which could be three or could be nine, depending on your definition of “several.” We frequently hear her thoughts in voiceover, where she repeats the movie title because she sees no future for their relationship, yet here she is, going through the motions of meeting his parents, who live in the middle of nowhere and the middle of a blizzard on an Oklahoma farm, far from everything. His mother and father are either somewhat young or elderly depending on what part of the movie we’re watching. The story unfolds over 134 minutes in our lives and one night in Lucy and Jake’s lives or throughout their entire lives or in an eyeblink or possibly forever. The mother is played by Toni Collette and the father by David Thewlis, and they appear to be manifestations of Jake’s most horrifying and embarrassing perspectives of them.

Notably, on the drive, Lucy recites from memory a deeply moving poem she wrote about “going home,” and tears run down her face as she orates, and Jake says he felt like it was about him and she replies that specificity can be universal, and that’s just an example of the circular logic and insight that Kaufman loads into the dialogue with a bulldozer, and it seems crazy but also makes sense. Also on the drive, Lucy sees a pig on a billboard and it talks to her, then they get to the farm and Jake tells her a story about how maggots ate some of their pigs alive recently, and then his mother serves ham for dinner. The pig will return later in the movie, but I’ve already said enough about it, “it” being the movie and possibly also the pig.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: David Lynch’s Meet the Parents. Also, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an amalgamation of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind‘s bent mind and the uneager-to-pleaseness of Synecdoche, New York.

Performance Worth Watching: Buckley is astounding. Now go watch her in Wild Rose.

Memorable Dialogue: Pretend Lucy is someone watching the movie and Jake is Kaufman:

Lucy: “You’re being willfully obtuse.”

Jake: “That’s not my intention.”

Lucy, with a mocking tone: “That’s not my intention.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The key scene in the movie is, I think, when Lucy and Jake pull over in the middle of a blinding snowstorm to get ice cream, and it’s a profoundly stressful interaction with the employees, all of whom are wearing short sleeves even though it’s f—ing cold, two of whom are mocking and mean, and one of whom seems sad but seems to be on their side, and there’s an odd smell coming from the back room, and the whole transaction takes too long. It’s representative of the entire film, which is a wholesale collection of tangents adding up to a white-hot screaming ball of anxiety. Early on, Lucy insists the dinner visit be brief, because she has a paper to write in the morning, or a shift to work, or whatever. She frequently says it’s time to go and it takes forever to leave and when they finally get on the road toward home — HER home, not Jake’s childhood home, which they just left — Jake insists on pulling over to get ice cream, further prolonging the trip into the blinding white snowy darkness.

Kaufman structures the film like a nightmare where everything and everyone, yourself included, conspires to prevent you from accomplishing the one thing you really need to accomplish. I have a recurring one where I desperately need to dial a phone number, and keep pressing the wrong buttons — mash mash delete, mash, delete, argh, mash mash delete delete argh. Maybe some people don’t have these type of dreams, and maybe I’m Thinking of Ending Things won’t mean anything to them, and it’ll just be a waste of time, people driving endlessly into the night and talking in circles and circles and circles. I laughed several times, “several” meaning at least six, maybe eight, possibly because the film is funny in many non-obvious ways, possibly because it’s terrifying in those same exact ways.

The film is about much more than nothing or the great vexation that is human consciousness. It’s about aging, memory, David Foster Wallace, expectations, reality, where we’re from, where we’re going, who we were, Wordsworth, who we are, who we’re going to be, yearning, perception, science, intuition, art, what we hide in our basements, space-time, going home, Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, joy, despair, film criticism, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” the terrifying premise of showing someone else all that you are and everything about where you came from, Oklahoma!, literalism, metaphor, pigs, becoming unstuck in time, death, ascribing meaning to things, futility, the greatness that is Toni Collette, pride, truth, ice cream as a metaphor for mortality, two Jessies in one movie, shame and whatever else you want to project onto it. That’s my list. Yours may be shorter or longer.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a hell of a film.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream I'm Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix