I'm Thinking of Ending Things is Meandering and Exhausting

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Like so many before me, I've been a longstanding fan of the work of director and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Synecdoche, New York are profound pieces of cinema which have shaped the way people look at film and recognize movies (particularly dark comedies) as an artform which can communicate existential ideas. Sure, he's usually dismissed as pretentious, but I'm at a point in my life where I'm alright with most of the things I love being cast aside as such.

That being said I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Kaufman's newest film which released on Netflix today, is an exhausting two and a half hour trek through nothingness. The thin and wavering plot is stretched as thin as our protagonist's sanity as she and her terrible boyfriend venture out to a farm to visit his parents. Our protagonist (played by Jessie Buckley) is uncertain of who she is, and unfortunately that makes it difficult for the audience to know who she is as well. While Buckley is a phenomenal performer who delivers her dialogue with the same sort of confusion anyone would feel in her shoes, it's difficult to relate to her character when details as small as her major, profession, and name are constantly shifting. Is Kaufman attempting to remark on the sort of women Jake (played by Jesse Plemons) continuously brings home to his parents in a revolving door of confused college girls who realized they were simply too afraid to say "no."

Saying "no," or the inability to do so, is a key point in the film. As its title reflects, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is about a young woman who is terrified to simply say no to the relationship she has found herself in. From the beginning she had no desire to be with Jake, but it was easier to continue saying yes, and now she's found herself in a creaking eerie home with him and his parents. Toni Collette, a noted scream queen and horror icon, and David Thewlis both forth excellent performances but their acting skills are somewhat detracted from the nonsensical script they've been given.

That's not to say that I'm Thinking of Ending Things doesn't have promising moments. A heated discussion regarding the problematic nature of the song "Baby It's Cold Outside", Buckley's delivery of a moving poem about the quiet agony of loneliness, and Collette and Thewlis' unsettling performances all elevate the movie from something dull and pretentious to a somewhat watchable experience - just don't expect a sense of resolution.

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