‘I’m Thinking Of Ending Things’ Review: The Haunting New Charlie Kaufman Film On Netflix

The release of Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix this Friday September 4 is quite the event. Boasting brilliant performances by Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis, the film was inspired by Iain Reid’s bestselling novel. It is one of the best films to come out this year so far.

A young woman, Lucy, is thinking of ending things as her boyfriend, Jake, is driving them through a snowy blizzard to his parents for dinner. She’ll need to return home after the dinner because of work, she’ll repeatedly tell him. There is a risk they might get stuck there as the storm worsens. He tries to keep the conversation going on the drive there, but she’s too occupied in her own thoughts. Their future together doesn’t bode well, in her opinion.

They arrive at the house, and the atmosphere of the film darkens. She meets his parents after waiting for them to come down to the living room for a long while, and they have dinner. She, however, still needs to head home, as the storm is worsening, so that she can do her work in the morning and not be trapped at her boyfriend’s childhood home.

From what I’ve written above, Kaufman’s movie would appear to be pretty straightforward, it is anything but that. In the course of the dinner, Lucy will change names and profession numerous times as she tells his parents how she and Jake first met. Time will become confusing, and characters will appear and just as easily disappear.

Certain aspects of Kaufman’s film recall a legendary French film, whose story was equally baffling and enigmatic. The opening sequence of Kaufman’s film shows images of the interior of a house. The camera lingers on little details of an emptied family house—the ageing wallpaper, the tear on a door screen, the movement of a curtain next to a window left opened—as Jessie Buckley’s voice over tells us of her character’s relationship with a certain Jake. Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad, written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, also begins with images of the building, a hotel, in which the action of the film will take place, while the narration of the voice-over hovers over the images.

There are other many similarities between the two films—the enigmatic stage play that mirrors the story of the film, the changing outfits of the female protagonist, the sudden cuts to another time or place—that would suggest I’m Thinking of Ending Things was inspired by Last Year in Marienbad in terms of style.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things can be interpreted in a number of ways. One could say that the film explores the beginnings of a relationship, the anxiety of first meeting the parents. But it is most of all about doubt. Doubting what you think you know, what you have been taught to know. Doubting the very nature of our own thoughts as original. The film many times questions where our ideas and thoughts come from, whether there are not just mere imitations or copies planted in by pre-existing materials from our society’s culture, such as movies, poems, novels or even film reviews.

Many of the things Jessie Buckley’s character says are in fact quotes from other works, such as a poem by Canadian writer Eva H.D. or a Pauline Kael film review, while Jesse Plemons’ Jake cites and sings many popular musicals. In the beginning dialogue between Lucy and Jake, they frequently comment quotes by Bette Davies or William Wordsworth for example, or common sayings, such as trains always ran on time under Mussolini.

Nothing is original, all that we say and do are but mere echoes of what we’ve already read and seen. It thus becomes clear that the moments that resemble Last Year in Marienbad function as another means of quoting the film. It is not only what is being said that are quotations, but the images too cite previous works. I’m Thinking of Ending Things suggests the impact pop culture has on the construction of our own identity, our own sense of self. Lucy herself at one point calls cinema a “societal malady,” comparing it to a virus “changing us into itself.” I guess we are what we eat, and in this case, what we watch and read.

This is a remarkable film, and it is one of the few films I can’t wait to watch again.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is now on Netflix.