![]() ![]() She meets the janitor and asks him where Jake is, but she cannot remember what Jake looks like. After a long wait, she decides to look for Jake inside the school. Suddenly, Jake notices the janitor watching them from inside the school and decides to confront him, leaving the young woman alone in the car. After a heated argument in the parking lot about the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside", the couple share a kiss. Jake stops at the high school to throw the ice-cream cups away. While the young woman buys ice cream, an employee with a rash attempts to warn her of something she can't describe. They stop at Tulsey Town, a drive-through ice cream stand, whose employees are students at the janitor's school. On the drive home, Jake claims that the young woman drank too much wine, along with other inconsistent events word association leads to an extended critical discussion of John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence. She also receives another call from the same mysterious voice. When she takes a nightgown down to the basement to wash, she discovers several janitor uniforms in the washing machine and finds posters for exhibitions of Ralph Albert Blakelock paintings seemingly identical to her own. Over the course of the night, Jake's parents unexpectedly transform into their younger and older selves. She receives a call from a friend with a female name, where a mysterious male voice explains that there is "one question to answer". Later, she notices a picture of Jake as a child, but becomes confused after recognizing that child as herself. At dinner with Jake's parents, she, whose occupation and name change throughout, shows them photographs of her landscape paintings and explains how she met Jake at a trivia night in a bar, with narrative inconsistencies. Upon arrival, the young woman notices scratches on the basement door. Throughout the drive, as well as later scenes in the film, the main narrative is intercut with footage of an elderly janitor working at a high school, including scenes where he sees students rehearsing Oklahoma! and dancing in the hallway. Jake takes her to the barn, where he recounts a story about how the farm's pigs died after being eaten alive by maggots. After she recites a morbid poem about coming home, they arrive at the farmhouse owned by Jake's parents. During the drive, Jake attempts to recite a poem he read when he was younger, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, and pressures the young woman into reciting one of her poems to pass time. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the two lead performances and the cinematography.Ī young woman contemplates ending her seven-week relationship with her boyfriend Jake, while on a trip to meet his parents at their farm. I'm Thinking of Ending Things was released in select theaters on August 28, 2020, and on Netflix on September 4, 2020. The film is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Iain Reid and stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a 2020 American surrealist psychological thriller film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. I'm Thinking of Ending Thingsby Iain Reid In Kael's review of A Woman Under the Influence, she knocks director Cassavetes for attending only to the oppressed woman: "When Nick yells, the picture's only concern is the effect on Mabel," rather than for all the characters, wounded and wounding alike.(Redirected from I'm Thinking of Ending Things (film))įor the novel, see I'm Thinking of Ending Things (novel). It'd be a shame if sexism were the focal point, though. The obvious reading might focus on Jake's sexism or misogyny - which we catch glimpses of with his temptation to pin his dysfunctions on his mother, or his willingness to pressure the young woman into uncomfortably vulnerable situations. Jake's mother (played fearfully and wonderfully by Collette) tells the young woman about her son's need for control. Jake is fully understandable only through the young woman he's dragging around all night. ![]() And here, in the inescapable self-consciousness of Kaufman, we find Jake once more. Characters quibble over words and their meanings: wow, sign, sissy, several. David Foster Wallace, Guy Debord, William Wordsworth, Anna Kavan and even the DSM mental health manual get explicit callouts and often direct quotes, along with Kael. The title and credits appear in Courier font, as though ripped from the script itself. In line with Kaufman's more recent films, Ending Things feels extremely heady, even writerly. ![]()
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