'I'm Thinking of Ending Things' Review: Charlie Kauffman's time-bending story may just make you end the film early
Bending genres can be spectacularly right or very, very wrong and Charlie Kauffman's latest brainchild inclines towards the latter. Dull, pointless gifts wrapped in fancy packages can be annoying, but they are probably not as frustrating as 'I'm Thinking of Ending Things' might be to the regular Netflix viewer. Hardly what one could call a binge-watch, the Jessie Buckley-Jesse Plemons starrer entangles more than just the two of them.
The story kicks off with a young woman (Buckley) whose name or profession can't be definitely said. Unsure about her very new relationship, the young woman goes on a road trip with her boyfriend Jake (Plemons) to visit his parents on their farm far away from the city. Ever since the beginning of the story, the unreliable narrator in the young woman contemplates ending something which at first seems like her own life. Soon, however, as she embarks on the journey, her narration - abruptly and often incessantly cut by active conversation between the two - reveals that she could be addressing the relationship too when she says she wants to end things.
It is when they arrive at Jake's creepy barn-house lifestyle where things get interesting, but unfortunately don't last. Jake's parents, who once again remain unnamed and are played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis, are every bit creepy in the way one would expect a couple that raised a serial killer. The house is odd too, almost as if a labyrinth, with a basement door eerily welcoming visitors with suspicious scratch marks on its outside and the young woman constantly envisioning Jake's parents doing different things as differently aged versions of themselves.
With ample potential for a murder house, the drama attempts to be a thriller but achieves little. Once the difficult visit is over the two resume their time on the road, once again in the car where more than half the movie seems to take place. These car rides are both reflective and contemplative. The couple - physicist, janitor, painter, poets - whatever they are at different moments of the film, are educated with a refined taste no doubt. However, there's no clarity on how they met and their sexualities are ambiguous enough to suggest a gay man and a lesbian woman found each other as a respite from society. But that is not the case. The story can't be simple. Haphazardly artistic, Kauffman's screenplay makes the young woman quote poets as her own and recite popular movie review verbatim from memory. She even passes off museum paintings as her own and things continue getting bizarre until the couple finds themselves inside what Jake calls his old school.
Apart from artistic exploration, why this commentary on human suffering and unhealthy relationships was made isn't easy to figure out. The film ends at the school where versions of the young woman and Jake engage in elaborate ballet performances - sort of like your alt-'La La Land' if you will and shades of how the two feel about each other are played out through exquisite movements that simply won't appeal to the Netflix masses. More often than not, one would find themselves wondering just what the 'heck' is going on and the final scene of Jake the whizkid accepting an unnamed award for his finally recognized brilliance is as reminiscent of the 'Oklahoma!' musical as anything can be.
While the film is genre-bending nonsense that hardly makes any sense, there are certain latent layers to Kauffman's work in the film that are reminiscent of 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' too. For instance, the Young Woman walking through the snowy landscape searching for Jake when he has wandered off into what he calls his old school looks almost too similar to the snow-laden fields Joel and Clementine lay down and make snow angels on. Replace the same novel cluelessness with the four striking star-studded leads' performances and you have the Netflix movie.
Its mind-bending artistic finesse aside, 'I'm Thinking of Ending Thinks' might make viewers think of ending the movie a tad bit too early simply for its inconclusive ending that just fades off into a blue opaqueness. Elements of horror sprinkled here and there, the story is neither fully existential nor a drama and definitely not a thriller. If anything, it feels like a rhetorical question, a wrong equation you must prove, if you will. And though seems like a fit ride for an interactive special, there's not much investment one can indulge in except for racking their brains over just what the protagonists of this story are trying to end.
'I'm Thinking of Ending Things' premieres on September 4 only on Netflix.
