I'm Thinking of Ending Things
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a 2020 American surrealist psychological thriller drama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. The film is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Iain Reid and stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things was released in select theaters on August 28, 2020, and on Netflix on September 4, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the two lead performances and the cinematography.
Plot
A young woman contemplates ending her seven-week relationship with her boyfriend Jake, while on a trip to meet his parents at their farm. During the drive, Jake attempts to recite a poem he read when he was younger, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, and pressures the young woman into reciting one of her poems to pass time. After she recites a morbid poem about coming home, they arrive at the farmhouse owned by Jake's parents. Jake takes her to the barn, where he recounts a story about how the farm's pigs died after being eaten alive by maggots. Throughout the drive, as well as later scenes in the film, the main narrative is intercut with footage of an elderly janitor working at a high school, including scenes where he sees students rehearsing Oklahoma! and dancing in the hallway.
Upon arrival, the young woman notices scratches on the basement door. At dinner with Jake's parents, she, whose occupation and name change throughout, shows them photographs of her landscape paintings and explains how she met Jake at a trivia night in a bar, with narrative inconsistencies. Later, she notices a picture of Jake as a child, but becomes confused after recognizing that child as herself. She receives a call from a friend with a female name, where a mysterious male voice explains that there is "one question to answer". Over the course of the night, Jake's parents unexpectedly transform into their younger and older selves. When she takes a nightgown down to the basement to wash, she discovers several janitor uniforms in the washing machine and finds posters for exhibitions of Ralph Albert Blakelock paintings seemingly identical to her own. She also receives another call from the same mysterious voice.
On the drive home, Jake claims that the young woman drank too much wine, along with other inconsistent events; word association leads to an extended critical discussion of John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence.{{efn|The young woman's monologue is taken directly from Pauline Kael's review of the film. A collection of her reviews (For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies) can be seen in Jake's childhood home. They stop at Tulsey Town, a drive-through ice cream stand, whose employees are students at the janitor's school. While the young woman buys ice cream, an employee with a rash attempts to warn her of something she can't describe. Jake stops at the high school to throw the ice-cream cups away. After a heated argument in the parking lot about the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside", the couple share a kiss. Suddenly, Jake notices the janitor watching them from inside the school and decides to confront him, leaving the young woman alone in the car. After a long wait, she decides to look for Jake inside the school. She meets the janitor and asks him where Jake is, but she cannot remember what Jake looks like. She tells the janitor that nothing happened between her and Jake on the night they met, instead claiming Jake made her uncomfortable by staring at her.
After she discovers Jake at the end of a hall, they look on as people dressed like Jake, the young woman and the janitor engage in a ballet,Template:Efn which ends when the janitor's dancer kills Jake's dancer with a knife.
Having finished his shift, the janitor enters his car but does not start the motor. He experiences hallucinations of Jake's parents and animated Tulsey Town commercials. The janitor then takes off his clothes and walks back inside the school, led by the hallucination of a maggot-infested pig who tells him that he and his ideas are one and the same, and that he should get dressed.
On an auditorium stage, an old Jake receives a Nobel Prize{{efn|The Nobel Prize acceptance speech is taken from John Nash's acceptance speech during the finale of A Beautiful Mind, the DVD of which is seen on the shelf of Jake's childhood bedroom. to an audience of people from his life, all of them in theatrical old-age makeup. They give him a standing ovation. In the final shot, the janitor's car is covered in snow in the school parking lot.
