C+ | A road trip to meet a significant other's parents fractures the relationship and time itself. Directed by Charlie Kaufman Starring Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons Review by Jon Kissel |
Charlie Kaufman seems like exactly the person that streaming services and their no-strings-attached bonanza of cash were made for. If I’m a studio executive and I need movies to gross deep into nine-figure territory, the first things that get cut are idiosyncratic representations of this or that decaying mental state. A more depressed, less funny, less creepy version of Woody Allen, Kaufman’s neuroticism has infected half a dozen movies over a couple decades, most very good to great. The greatest Kaufman films, namely the first three that he only wrote for, are the unquestioned best in comparison to the three that he directed. The latest of these latter three, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, is the epitome of a filmmaker left completely to his own creative devices. For most, Kaufman’s new film is going to be an indulgent and impenetrable exercise, but he’s been too good for too long to just dismiss this outright. The equivalent of a difficult crossword puzzle, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is probably worth it for those who really want to do the work and decipher it: I just don’t think I’m in that group.
It’s one thing for a film to go for a literary feel. If a French movie’s going to be about a teenager, the main character’s absolutely going to sit through a lecture about this or that writer/philosopher and it’s going to feed into the film’s theme. That level of framing is all well and good, but I’m Thinking of Ending Things might be the most literary film I’ve ever seen. Much of it takes place in a car, as Jake (Jesse Plemons) drives his girlfriend Lucy (Jessie Buckley) to his parents’ farm for dinner. They not only discuss high-minded topics like novels, film criticism, and poetry, but they fully recite long passages from actual film reviews and David Foster Wallace books. I can imagine the average viewer, who’s already a likely cinephile if they’re seeking out a Kaufman movie, being aggressively shoved away from the film once minute two of a word-for-word Pauline Kael review commences. We’ve discussed Nicolas Winding-Refn as a director who hates his audience, and Kaufman’s similar in that he simply doesn’t care about his audience. If Kaufman wants these monologues in his films, then concerns of watchability or momentum don’t factor in.
I’m not going to pretend that I have much sense of what all of this film’s strangeness is for. I don’t even really know what’s happening. Kaufman’s two previous films, Synecdoche New York and Anomalisa, both started from a diagnosis of some perception-altering mental disease and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same held true here. Discussing David Foster Wallace so much tips what’s on Kaufman’s mind, as Wallace wrote a lot about the ability of culture, specifically television, to warp one’s perception of the world and what to expect from it. A lot of the film discusses the comfort of inertia instead of doing the hard thing, like the title suggests. The relationship between Jake and Lucy is no great thing as depicted, but it’s easier to be polite than it is to break it off. Whatever’s happening with time or with the janitor (Guy Boyd) is a mystery that would require repeat viewings.
Of all things to watch again, however, it’s hard to imagine returning to this. It’s not like there aren’t some pleasures to be taken from it. Buckley and Plemons are great considering all that is asked of them, and Toni Collette and David Thewlis as Jake’s parents are also delightfully weird. Both Jake and Lucy are interesting types, with her as a capable person across multiple disciplines and him as a reasonably competent man that’s still deeply affected by an unhappy childhood. It doesn’t hurt that I recognize a lot of what the film is talking about, making me feel like I might do alright at the Genus Edition of Trivial Pursuit. On the other hand, I can’t imagine how irritating the film would be without the small toeholds I was able to find for myself. This is a film that vacillates between total uncertainty of what’s going to happen next and impatience over when this or that interminable scene is going to end. Fascination and boredom live side-by-side here, and that combo is rare enough that it has to be seen to be believed.
If I had come across I’m Thinking of Ending Things during a period of time when I wasn’t experiencing a steadily declining attention span, I might think more highly of it. Instead, after six months of drastically reduced time in public and no theater screenings since March, I had a hard time getting through this brain teaser of a film. I don’t really go to movies for puzzles (see my impatience with Christopher Nolan exposition or my dislike of Primer), and this is a puzzle. As indulgent as this is, I don’t think Kaufman has it in him to make an actually bad film, but this is easily my least favorite of anything he’s put his name on. A little creative second-guessing can be a great thing. C+
I’m not going to pretend that I have much sense of what all of this film’s strangeness is for. I don’t even really know what’s happening. Kaufman’s two previous films, Synecdoche New York and Anomalisa, both started from a diagnosis of some perception-altering mental disease and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same held true here. Discussing David Foster Wallace so much tips what’s on Kaufman’s mind, as Wallace wrote a lot about the ability of culture, specifically television, to warp one’s perception of the world and what to expect from it. A lot of the film discusses the comfort of inertia instead of doing the hard thing, like the title suggests. The relationship between Jake and Lucy is no great thing as depicted, but it’s easier to be polite than it is to break it off. Whatever’s happening with time or with the janitor (Guy Boyd) is a mystery that would require repeat viewings.
Of all things to watch again, however, it’s hard to imagine returning to this. It’s not like there aren’t some pleasures to be taken from it. Buckley and Plemons are great considering all that is asked of them, and Toni Collette and David Thewlis as Jake’s parents are also delightfully weird. Both Jake and Lucy are interesting types, with her as a capable person across multiple disciplines and him as a reasonably competent man that’s still deeply affected by an unhappy childhood. It doesn’t hurt that I recognize a lot of what the film is talking about, making me feel like I might do alright at the Genus Edition of Trivial Pursuit. On the other hand, I can’t imagine how irritating the film would be without the small toeholds I was able to find for myself. This is a film that vacillates between total uncertainty of what’s going to happen next and impatience over when this or that interminable scene is going to end. Fascination and boredom live side-by-side here, and that combo is rare enough that it has to be seen to be believed.
If I had come across I’m Thinking of Ending Things during a period of time when I wasn’t experiencing a steadily declining attention span, I might think more highly of it. Instead, after six months of drastically reduced time in public and no theater screenings since March, I had a hard time getting through this brain teaser of a film. I don’t really go to movies for puzzles (see my impatience with Christopher Nolan exposition or my dislike of Primer), and this is a puzzle. As indulgent as this is, I don’t think Kaufman has it in him to make an actually bad film, but this is easily my least favorite of anything he’s put his name on. A little creative second-guessing can be a great thing. C+
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