He's told me so much about both of you, too.ĬOLLETTE: (As Mother) Oh. TONI COLLETTE: (As Mother) Oh (laughter).ĬOLLETTE: (As Mother) So glad to meet you, Louisa. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS")ĭAVID THEWLIS: (As Father) Here they come. That's around the time we meet his almost unclassifiably eccentric parents, played by David Thewlis and Toni Collette. Once they arrive at his family's farmhouse, Jake talks less and starts retreating into himself. Jake, in his quiet droning way, likes to dominate a conversation, which in this case means making elaborate references to William Wordsworth, Leo Tolstoy and the history of the Broadway musical. He's a moderately nicer version of the schlubby, socially maladroit artists and intellectuals that Kaufman has always liked putting front and center. And whenever Jake opens his mouth, which is pretty often, we start to understand why. They're on their way to visit Jake's parents, which suggests that he's more committed to their relationship than she is. She's the one who's thinking of ending things, not in the suicidal sense, but in the we should break up sense. I say appears to because in a Charlie Kaufman movie, where false fronts and psychological switcharoos (ph) abound, you never really know.Īs they drive through the wind and snow, the young woman carries on a lively conversation with herself. This seems odd at first, since she is the movie's narrator and appears to dominate the story's perspective. She's billed as the young woman in the credits. It could be Lucy (ph) or Louisa (ph) or something else entirely. The boyfriend's name is Jake, but after a while, you realize you're not sure what the girlfriend's name is. It begins with a young couple played by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons driving through an Oklahoma blizzard. It's based on a thriller by the Canadian novelist Iain Reid, which makes it Kaufman's first adaptation since, well, "Adaptation." And like that 2002 film, it's a reminder that he's incapable of tackling another writer's story in straightforward fashion. Those interior emotional states are very much at the melancholy heart of "I'm Thinking Of Ending Things," his third film as a director and a movie that you might fall in love with, as I did, or reject entirely, as many already have. The two earlier movies he's directed, "Synecdoche, New York" and "Anomalisa," are just as conceptually out there, but they always start off feeling pretty grounded, tethered to mundane reality.įor all their twisted, dreamy logic, Kaufman's stories never veer too far from depressingly relatable subjects, like loneliness, failure and mortality. In his brilliantly deadpan scripts for "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind," surfing your subconscious or someone else's feels like the most natural thing in the world. JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: One of the weirdest things about Charlie Kaufman's movies is how normal they can make weirdness seem. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. In addition to publishing his first novel, "Antkind," he's written and directed a new, darkly comic thriller called "I'm Thinking Of Ending Things." It's now streaming on Netflix. Five years after his animated feature "Anomalisa," the filmmaker Charlie Kaufman is having a busy year.
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