Kaufman has in a sense already reviewed “I’m Thinking of Ending Things.” His 700-page novel “Antkind,” tells the story of a middle-aged film critic named B Rosenberger Rosenberg, who once dismally reviews Kaufman’s films. He says that Kaufman’s next movie will be “Whatever it may be, it’s certain it’s yet another turgid and overhyped foray in to his self-referential, self congratulatory psyche.” Although it’s difficult not to admire the self-deprecation of Kaufman, I would give the I’m Thinking Of Ending Things meaning more credit. It premieres Friday on Netflix and, though not Kaufman’s most stunning puzzle (“Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich”) or his most ambitious (“Synecdoche”) nor his most gentle/painful (“Anomalisa”) Kaufman suggests that “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” could be his last film as a director.
It all starts on the road. Lucy and Jake Plemons, her boyfriend for seven weeks, are driving to his childhood farmhouse to meet his parents during a snowstorm. Lucy is observing from Lucy’s perspective and believes that the relationship is over. She could be contemplating whether it’s easier to just keep going or whether it’s better to end the relationship. They talk Wordsworth in the car with a snowy night-time blur all around them. She recites a dark poem about homecoming. Lucy says viruses are “just one more example of everything.” The conversation is halting, overlapping and full of corrections, backtracks, is about as much as what they are talking about. This is a dream? If so, which dream is it? Jake’s or Lucy? One, or maybe all of the characters in “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, is a projection. Movies have their own account of their role in destroying and warping our dreams if this is a dream universe. The film of Robert Zemeckis, a mocking maudlin, makes a funny cameo.
The disorientation increases when they arrive at their house. Jake’s parents, Toni Collette (surrealistically sensational) and David Thewlis (normally present at the house in one instant but absent at another. They are very different in age. Lucy’s profession and name change seemingly randomly. She notices that Jake’s picture as a child is on her wall. It looks exactly like her. Kaufman, the famous author who tried unsuccessfully to adapt Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” into “Adaptation”, is now working from a Canadian novel by Iain Reid. It was also slippery in perspective and reality but it came together more clearly from Jake’s perspective and around an incident that happened in the past. Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” spirals deeper into the mind. A dance sequence is shown in high school halls. There is also a musical set up and deep dialogue. We are blown by the wind of time.”
Although I have my theories, I am not sure they are valid. Certain people will not be as enamoured of an experience that feels like they are slipping through a series of trap doors. This is a falling that leads further away from epiphany and not closer to it until you are confronted with, of course, a staged performance “Oklahoma.” To me, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, however, seems to be a beautiful and sad way to sustain consciousness and time. Buckley is amazing, real or fake. Guy Boyd’s brief appearance as an elderly janitor, and possibly the linchpin of the movie is hauntingly beautiful.
I wish I could have viewed “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” together with others. This is more than any movie released to home in the last few months. Kaufman’s greatest gift is, in my opinion, to share an inner honesty with others that doesn’t often make it onto the screen. It is a desperate grasping that can be best shared with others, in confusion or clarity. Kaufman is like all of us, full of multitudes.
