There are some movies I’ll start watching, realise they’re terrible and quit within ten or fifteen minutes. Writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s latest drama/thriller, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, is not that kind of movie. One might say it’s worse because I’d hoped to like it far more than I did.
I expected more because I enjoyed Anomalisa (2015), and had hoped that I’m Thinking of Ending Things would be similarly pleasing and thought-provoking. It may well be thought-provoking for some, but post-viewing, it did not inspire me to think anything significant, except ‘what a waste of two hours,’ particularly since the peculiar happenings that inspired me to watch the movie in the first place never get explained.
Kaufman’s story of a young woman who comes to question everything she thought she knew about her new boyfriend, upon arriving at his parent’s secluded farm is a film that may have fans raving on about the way it explores loneliness, death, sanity and so on. Yet, I for one didn’t want to work as hard and have as much patience as I’m Thinking of Ending Things requires of its audience.
By the third or fourth time that Jessie Buckley’s character says the words ‘I’m thinking of ending things‘, the film had lost me, and I wanted to stop watching; yet I needed to see how the story would end.
Buckley, Toni Colette, David Thewlis and Jessie Plemons all perform brilliantly. Still, none of it proved enough for me. Regardless of the ‘stylish’ way the story is edited and told; the scares and other creative choices, it just didn’t result in a satisfying experience for me. Instead it felt incomplete.
I’m sure that very serious fans of Kaufman will likely enjoy this the most. For everyone else, sure, give it a chance if you’re SUPER curious.
Happy Film Loving,
G
