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Review im thinking of ending things
Review im thinking of ending things










review im thinking of ending things

It was a bit disappointing when I realized the movie had tricked me into thinking it was centered around a woman, only to reveal her character was a projection of Ending Things’s real protagonist, Jake. Kaufman’s preoccupation with solipsism becomes more apparent as we get deeper into the film and begin to realize that this isn’t really Lucy’s story, but Jake’s. (Kaufman insists he isn’t slamming Zemeckis, and the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future seemed to get the joke by giving his blessing for Kaufman to use his name.) Kaufman uses it to further disorient us when plot points in Order Up! begin to bleed into Lucy and Jake’s story. Order Up!, the fake movie-within-a-movie that Ending Things cuts to as a character watches the DVD on his lunch break, doesn’t just serve as a quick joke. Only in a Charlie Kaufman project will the movie stop down to take a shot at both cheesy romantic comedies and Hollywood director Robert Zemeckis.

review im thinking of ending things

Kaufman explores themes like fear of aging, identity dissociation, and the unreliability of time with his signature disorienting style and black humor. Just as in his masterpiece, Synecdoche, New York and, well, every other work in which Kaufman’s been the driving creative force, Ending Things is dripping with existential crisis and dread. Lucy sees them in their 50s, their 30s, and their 80s, but things really get weird when she and Jake leave the middle-of-nowhere farmhouse for the return trip home. Jake’s parents seem to change in age over the course of the evening, for example. Over the course of the day-trip, Lucy begins to experience reality in a more and more fractured and unsettling way. Lucy is traveling with Jake, her new boyfriend of six or eight weeks – she can’t seem to remember just how long it’s been – to meet his parents for the first time and to have dinner with them. The film – loosely based on Iain Reid’s 2016 debut novel – ostensibly tells the story of a young woman named, well, we never really know, hence the use of the word “ostensibly.” She’s listed in the credits as “Young Woman,” but the character is referred to throughout the movie by several names, including Lucy – that’s what I’ll call her for the purposes of this review – Louisa, and Lucia. Since I’m not that clever, you’ll have to settle for a more standard review in which I praise Kaufman’s unique vision while also wrestling with a few of the picture’s shortcomings. If I were a more clever writer, I might invent a Kaufmanesque conversation between the two filmmakers, in which Aronofsky calls to praise Kaufman’s idiosyncratic and disturbing new work of art. Not since Darren Aronofsky’s mother! in 2017 has a movie so successfully and hauntingly evoked an oneiric state as Charlie Kaufman’s fever dream vision I’m Thinking of Ending Things.












Review im thinking of ending things