![]() ![]() While Jake’s mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis) deliver respectable performances (Collette’s kookiness becomes somewhat routine after some time), it’s difficult to appreciate the lengthy time spent at the home beyond some pungent moments of dialogue or surrealism.Īfter the farmhouse, Jake and Lucy go from strange place to strange place, the plot becoming elusive until the audience slowly realizes that Lucy isn’t quite real at all (more on this point later). Furthermore, in its exploration of time and its foreshadowing of Jake’s real life, the scenes in the farmhouse are poorly paced. The view of the brand new swingset in the first car ride, for example, accomplishes this variance. There’s a lack of dynamic movement - both character movement and character movement - that is both interesting and in line with the tense tone of the script. ![]() The camera routinely switches from angles within and outside the car, but generally shoots back and forth between Buckley and Plemens’ characters. These scenes, especially the 13-minute night drive towards home, fail to be as visually interesting as the conversation is thematically interesting. In “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” viewers are treated to a metaphysical conversation between Lucy and her boyfriend as they drive through the snowstorm. That is, aesthetic qualities of the film - how visually interesting it appears, its editing, and so on - and its structural elements are not as consistent as the narrative and the characters. The trouble with film adaptations of novels, especially when the novel is somewhat surreal or complex, is that the film sometimes forgets that it's a film. Nevertheless, among these missteps, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is a valiant effort by Kaufman to present existentialism in its broadest, most expansive definition: to feel the weight of a lifetime pass through oneself. Additionally, a poorly structured third act strings together scenes in a haphazard manner that prevents the plot and its characters from flourishing the same way that the film’s central themes hit so poignantly. ![]() Kaufman loves his words, and some conversations draw on for what seems like ages. While the darker, more confounding elements of Kaufman’s adaptation bring the work nowhere close to incompetency, the film is also not a masterpiece. 4, left many viewers scratching their heads as to what they just witnessed. In any case, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” distributed by Netflix on Sept. That same meddling with philosophy, on the other hand, has earned his films the label of pretentious by some audiences. Beginning with his screenplay for “Being John Malkovich” (1999), Kaufman’s conversation-heavy, idea-driven way of writing has made him a darling in the American art house community. The film, an adaptation of the novel by Ian Reid, is the latest in writer and director Charlie Kaufman’s growing existentialist filmography. “I’m Thinking Of Ending Things”(2020) takes the simple story of meeting-the-parents and makes everything go odd. Jessie Buckley plays a doubtful woman concerned about her relationship with her new boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons), as they shuttle through this surreal and unnerving wintery landscape. A sage cartoon pig, an “Oklahoma!” pas de deux, and an oppressively warm farmhouse in the dead of winter.
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