If Charlie Kaufman has proven one thing throughout his career, it's that nobody is able to master mindfuck cinema quite like him. He has proven it with the likes of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York. With his latest film, Netflix's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Kaufman proves it even further. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny Kaufman's sheer ambition and I'm Thinking of Ending Things might just be his most ambitious film to date.
Trying to even vaguely summarize the plot of this movie is daunting but alas, here's my attempt: A young woman (Jessie Buckley) travels with her new boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons), to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) on their farm amidst a series of strange and surreal occurrences.
While I’m Thinking of Ending Things is full of uncertainties thematically and story-wise, what IS certain is the greatness of the performances and filmmaking craft on display here.
While some may have been introduced to Jessie Buckley in her 2019 projects Wild Rose and Chernobyl, this film will be many’s first time seeing her onscreen, myself included. She is an instant revelation here and gives what is probably the best performance of the year. When everything around her began to descend into the surreal, Buckley remains grounded in her humanity, making her an easy character to latch onto. Her character is extremely multi-faceted and she plays each of those facets to perfection. Buckley’s uniqueness as an actress really shines through in this film and is practically unmatched in the Hollywood landscape. Jesse Plemons is also excellent here, proving once again why he is one of the most underrated actors working today. While their roles are fairly small, Toni Collette and David Thewlis, particularly Collette, steal every single scene they‘re in. No part of the film is at all boring but the entire time they’re at the farm is easily the most investing section of the movie, and much of that can be attributed to Collette and Thewlis.
While I have seen a few of Kaufman’s writer-only projects, this is my first experience with him in the director’s chair and his talent for it is undeniable. Kaufman had a clear vision that came from his twisted, strange mind, and only he could’ve made it come across so beautifully on screen. Unsurprisingly, his screenplay is phenomenal, as it has all the elements that Kaufman screenplays always do- it’s ambitious, funny, deeply emotional, very ambiguous, and full of unexpected twists and turns.
On a technical level, the film is utterly brilliant and every single one of these elements contributes to the sense of dread, uncertainty, and uncomfortableness of the film’s atmosphere. The cinematography by Łukasz Żal is breathtakingly gorgeous. The dark, bleak color palette really contributes to that same tone in the film and the 4:3 aspect ratio not only gives the film a dream-esque feel but also gives it a sense of confinement like there’s nowhere to run. The sound mixing in the film helps to make it dreamily eerie and Jay Wadley’s score is really beautiful, complementing the mood and tone of the film in spades.
Unpacking I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the cinematic equivalent of rocket science. Every element of this movie is shrouded in a layer of symbolism and ambiguity, making the film a profoundly confounding trip that will make you question your very existence and that demands multiple viewings to even begin to piece together the ambiguous, complex puzzle brought upon by this movie. It makes you think about time and the lack of it, love, loneliness, and death but it's what Charlie Kaufman is trying to say about these themes, as well as how they're presented in the story, that will warrant these subsequent viewings. While I don't truly know what the film was really about nor what it was trying to say, I do know that it's one of the most personally affecting films I've ever seen. It's easily the best film of 2020 so far and it will be beyond surprising if anything else manages to top it for the rest of the year. Hell, it may very well be one of the best films of all-time, though it will be impossible to know until a few more watches are given (but those will come very soon). One thing is for sure- I'll never stop thinking of I'm Thinking of Ending Things.
★★★★★
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