I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) Review

I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Adapting Charlie Kaufman’s script from Iain Reid’s novel of the same name, his new film opens with this sentence pouring from the lips of the voiceover, who we do not know yet. It is obvious that we will watch a movie that focuses on the experiences of someone who gave up everything enough to say this sentence or what passes through his mind. Kaufman, in the movie I’m Thinking of Ending Things; It takes a big bracket to cover the present, past, traumas, disappointments. He bends the conventions of classical narrative cinema with its own playfulness, turning the inside of this bracket into a horror tunnel. But what makes this horror tunnel creepy are ghosts, ghouls, creatures etc. not; life itself.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is inevitably reminiscent of many movies in the history of cinema in that the main character wanders in the corridors of his consciousness, which has turned into a tunnel of fear due to the effects of his experiences — or what he cannot live — and the consciousness leaves himself in the turbid waters, but with his interpretation of the novel they are based on, Lynne Ramsay’s 2017 dated You Were Never Here — even more so in contact with You Were Never Really Here. But the more reticent and reticent You Were Never Really Here, which is lesson-worthy in terms of script economics, penetrating the shattered mind of a war veteran, the more talkative I’m Thinking of Ending Things. While Ramsay’s character chooses to remain silent under the influence of what he saw and did, Kaufman’s character seems to try to fill all the gaps in his mind with what he knows and what he thinks, as if to prove and explain himself against the failures he had to face.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things: Vortex and Spider Webs

*** The rest of the article may contain spoilers about I’m Thinking of Ending Things. ***

When Charlie Kaufman’s first behind-the-scenes New York Illusions — Synecdoche opened New York, the theater director who had problems with both his work and relationships was clearly expressing his mood with the sentence “I don’t feel well.” In the rest of the film, this main character sets up a kind of simulation of his life in an empty warehouse, this time attempting to recreate the strings in his own hands. The main character of I’m Thinking of Ending Things feels just as bad as this character. But she does not have the power to “recreate” her own life. In her own way, she is a young woman who paints, albeit not assertively, and we can describe as a cinema-related, middle-class intellectual. The narrative of the film begins with the journey they made to their country house to meet the family of her boyfriend, with whom she had been with for six weeks. In this context, it can be said that I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a road movie. However, this journey includes a sounding work between the layers of consciousness of the character while framing the roundtrips between physical spaces. As I’m Thinking of Ending Things goes deeper into the character’s mind, it becomes both darker and more complex. Perhaps the most fundamental point of the success of the film is that Charlie Kaufman, while keeping this complex structure together, constantly expands the narrative with references from different disciplines and after a certain point rejects narrative patterns.

Shortly after the opening, we learn that the voice we hear at the very beginning of the film belongs to the woman we mentioned above, Lucy, whom Jessie Buckley gave life to with an exquisite performance. However, as Kaufman’s sounding continues, the name of the main character first turns into Louisa, which resembles Lucy, then loses the resemblance to Yvonne, and in the closing credits it turns into a “Young Woman” in a way that negates the characterization, which is one of the basic elements of motion pictures. This detail makes it clear that Kaufman is aiming for more than a simple character drama. Placing the character at the center of the narrative on such a slippery surface that will constantly change his name and leave him anonymous in the finale, the writer and director builds the whole world of the film on this ground. Thus, a journey on a snowy day, which will seem quite ordinary in any narrative, serves as a door to much more. Every step taken on the other side of this door turns into a shocking move that resembles the whirring of a person caught in a vortex.

During the first journey that constitutes the first block of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which we can say consists of three blocks in total, we learn about the characters and relationships of her boyfriend Jake, played by Lucy and Jesse Plemons. The claustrophobic atmosphere, which is created in the sequence, which takes place completely in the car and is somewhat closer to the existential stories of Abbas Kiarostami, strengthened by the effect of the 1.33: 1 screen ratio used throughout the film, captures the whole of the film with jigsaw pieces reflected on the screen every second. But the impact of this sequence on the entire movie isn’t just limited to its atmosphere. What the couple says about each other, about themselves and their relationships throughout this journey is full of foreshadowings of what we will follow. In fact, they gain such profound meanings at key points in the rest of the movie that it becomes very difficult to say that these are just foreshadowing. Because with the second block of the movie, which begins with the couple arriving at the house where Jake’s family lives and where he lived his childhood, the channels opened in the dialogues on the journey become more and more forked; Every detail that looks like foreshadowing begins to surround the film like a spider web.

Jake’s family home, somewhat reminiscent of the Bates Motel in Hitchcock’s Psycho — where secrets wanted to be left in the past are locked in the basement, where Jake’s room was in his early youth — many of the cult and classic movies VHS, with this young man living DVD boxes of phrases that refer to traumas are preserved in their original state, blended with floral wallpapers through the patterns of Lucy’s dress, and perhaps most importantly, a surreal in which the young man’s parents are constantly appearing in different ages as played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis. represented like space. The sentences and objects that we saw and heard in the first block, which became meaningful with the arrival of Lucy and Jake, are mixed with new ones that indicate what will happen in the rest of the film, and a reflection of consciousness emerges, full of thorns that are very blurred and disturb the audience as well as the character. From this point on, a serious question mark arises about who wants to end everything. And this question mark is followed by others: Who does the uniform hiding in the basement belong to, is Lucy happy in this relationship?

He gave the exact answer to this question mark and told the audience, “This is why! Kaufman does not intend to amaze a derivative; Rather, it seems to want to examine the transformation of a mind into such a maze under a surreal microscope. In doing so, it establishes a structure similar to the small and incompatible reflections that appear when a mirror is shattered by a thrown stone. These small pieces of mirrors do not give a complete and complete image when attached end to end. The closing scene of an imaginary movie directed by Robert Zemeckis reflects an ice cream commercial that you watched as a child, a musical episode that emerged suddenly with the effect of a trauma, and a surrealistic award speech. It is not possible to find a single and clear image in this vortex, and Kaufman is very aware that a film that focuses on such a fragmented consciousness cannot have a clear finale. So instead of coming to a clear conclusion, when Jake and Lucy — or Louisa, or Yvonne, or Young Woman — turn the wheel on the narrow road to Jake’s high school on the way back that constitutes the final block of the film, it offers a great cinematic delight and David Lynch He pulls his narrative into a labyrinth of a caliber that can fall in love with his works.

Lukasz Zal, who previously worked as the cinematographer of ambitious European films such as Ida and the Cold War — Zimna wojna, has also made a very good performance, which makes a strong impression with the performances of every actor entering the frame, gaining even more value with its creepy sound design, daring beyond genre definitions and geographic boundaries. A piece that passes with attitude I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Weirdly funny, weird, surreal, brave, complex and dark just like the mind it reflects. Like Kaufman’s narratives and life itself.

Originally published at https://filmnewss.com on December 5, 2020.