REAL BRAIN BENDER
MASTERFUL PIECE OF CINEMA THAT WILL MESS WITH YOUR MIND IN A WAY ONLY CHARLIE KAUFMAN COULD
Get Out, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Meet the Parents ... that intimidating first encounter with the in-laws has been a rich source of inspiration for filmmakers over the years.
But no one has tackled its splintering effects on the human psyche quite like Charlie Kaufman, still best known as the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Based on Iain Reid’s novel of the same name, I’m Thinking of Ending Things tells the story of a young woman who agrees to accompany her boyfriend on a trip to the family farm, even though she has doubts not only about their relationship, but also the point of her own existence.
As the couple drives, through a snowstorm, across an isolated rural landscape, it quickly becomes apparent that this journey is more meta than physical, that neither of the two main characters is wearing a seat belt, and that we, as moviegoers, are in for one helluva ride.
At which point, it’s comforting to know that we have an actor as dependable as Jesse Plemons (Fargo) at the wheel and a talent as incandescent as Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose) to provide some kind of emotional compass in this strange and fractured world.
Toni Collette and David Thewlis round out an exceptionally strong cast as Jake’s disturbingly off-kilter mother and father.
After the sort of intense conversation that only occurs in a warm car on a long journey, the couple arrives at their destination, whereupon Buckley’s character, known only as The Young Woman, is confronted by a pile of dead lambs and a horrifying account of maggot-infested live pigs.
Inside the house, she notices that the door to the basement is badly scratched, with all the attendant symbolism.
A static camera and an over-fertile, floral wallpaper backdrop add to a sense of dislocation and dread.
Time morphs and the characters begin to fragment.
Has The Young Woman known Jake for six weeks or six years?
Is he a smart and funny companion or a psychologically unstable loner?
Did they meet at a trivia night or in a diner? And what does French philosopher Guy Debord’s seminal Situationist text The Society of the Spectacle and John Cassavete’s 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence have to do with anything?
Don’t expect to come away with any definitive answers.
Kaufman’s work is most accessible when it is directed by someone else – perhaps because those collaborators keep his wilder flights of fantasy in check.
But while I’m Thinking of Ending Things raises more questions than it answers, nobody could accuse this filmmaker of setting too low a bar for himself.
And Jake’s surprisingly poignant musical finale almost suffices as a resolution.
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS
Now showing on Netflix