I'm Thinking of Ending Things was released in select theaters on August 28, 2020, and on Netflix on September 4, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the two lead performances and the cinematography.
Plot
Throughout the film, the main narrative is intercut with footage of an elderly janitor working at a high school, including scenes in which he sees students rehearsing Oklahoma! and watches a romantic comedy film.
A young woman (whose occupation and name change throughout) contemplates ending her relationship with her boyfriend Jake while on a trip to meet his parents at their farm. During the drive, Jake attempts to recite a poem he read when he was younger, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", and asks her to recite an original poem of hers to pass time. After she recites a morbid poem about coming home,[a] they arrive at the farmhouse. Jake takes her to the barn, where he recounts a story about the farm's pigs being eaten alive by maggots.
Upon entering the farmhouse, the woman notices scratches on the basement door. At dinner, she shows Jake's parents photographs of her landscape paintings and says she met Jake at a trivia night in a bar, with narrative inconsistencies. Later, she notices a childhood picture of Jake, but becomes confused after initially recognizing the child as herself. She receives a call from a friend with a female name, and a mysterious male voice explains that there is "one question to answer". Over the course of the night, Jake's parents transform into their younger and older selves, though nobody comments on this. When the woman takes a nightgown down to the basement to wash, she discovers several janitor uniforms in the washing machine and finds posters for Ralph Albert Blakelock exhibitions that have images of paintings seemingly identical to her own. She receives another call from the same mysterious voice.
On the drive home, Jake refers to several events that evening which the woman does not remember and then claims she drank a lot of wine. Word association leads to an extended critical discussion of John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence.[b] The couple stops at Tulsey Town, a drive-through ice cream stand, whose employees are students at the janitor's school. When the woman is leaving, an employee with a rash says they are scared for her.
Jake stops at his high school to throw the ice-cream cups away. After a heated argument in the parking lot about the lyrics of "Baby, It's Cold Outside", they share a kiss. Jake has a flashback of the janitor watching them from inside the school and decides to confront him, leaving the woman alone in the car. Eventually, she decides to look for Jake inside the school. She meets the janitor and asks him where Jake is, but she cannot remember what Jake looks like. She tells the janitor that nothing happened between Jake and her on the night they met, instead claiming Jake made her uncomfortable by staring at her.
The woman discovers Jake at the end of a hall. They watch as people dressed like themselves and the janitor engage in ballet,[c] which ends when the janitor's dancer kills Jake's dancer with a knife.
Having finished his shift, the janitor enters his car, but does not start the motor. He experiences hallucinations of Jake's parents arguing and animated Tulsey Town commercials. The janitor then undresses and reenters the school, led by the hallucination of a maggot-infested pig who tells him that "someone has to be the pig infested with maggots", that "everything is the same, when you look close enough", and that he should get dressed.
On an auditoriumstage, an old Jake receives a Nobel Prize[d] and sings "Lonely Room"[3] from Oklahoma! to an audience of people from his life, all of them in theatrical old-age makeup, who give him a standing ovation. The emotional Jake stands there to gaze upon the audience for an uncomfortably long time as the scene fades into solid blue.
In the final scene, the solid blue fades into a shot of the school parking lot the next morning, where the couple's car is absent, while the janitor's truck is still parked and now covered in snow.[4] Towards the end of the credits, scraping sounds emanate from the engine of an approaching snowplow.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things was released in select theaters on August 28, 2020,[15] and on Netflix on September 4.[16]
Critical reception
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 262 critic reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10; the critics' consensus for the film reads: "Aided by stellar performances from Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons, I'm Thinking of Ending Things finds writer-director Charlie Kaufman grappling with the human condition as only he can."[17] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on reviews from 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[18]
Karen Han of Polygon wrote: "The lack of clear answers and structure can be frustrating, but the strange way the story is told enhances just how real the exchanges between characters feel. The frustration that Lucy feels with Jake, that Jake feels with his mother, that his parents feel for each other, are all uncomfortably tangible, especially as tensions rise. The film's 134-minute runtime is a long time to sit with that feeling, but Kaufman's big divergence from the novel he's adapting is in lending its ending a more buoyant note."[19] In his review, Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 31⁄2 out of 4 stars, calling it "a movie that is undeniably complex in terms of symbolism and a more surreal final act than most people will be expecting". He also praised the cinematography, saying that the film's atmosphere is "amplified by a tight 4:3 aspect ratio courtesy of Łukasz Żal (Cold War) that forces the viewer to pay more attention to what's in frame."[20]The Observer's Wendy Ide wrote: "This is not cinema that leaves you feeling good about things. Nor does it tread a familiar path. But I'm Thinking of Ending Things is one of the most daringly unexpected films of the year, a sinewy, unsettling psychological horror, saturated with a squirming dream logic that tips over into the domain of nightmares."[21]
In a more mixed review, Adam Graham of The Detroit News gave the film a C, calling Plemons's and Buckley's performances excellent, but lamenting the plot, writing: "I'm Thinking of Ending Things is an unsolvable riddle where the only answer is mankind's hopelessness, and we've been down this road before."[22] For TIME, Stephanie Zacharek wrote: "For every moment of raw, affecting insight there are zillions of milliseconds of Kaufman's proving what a tortured smartie he is. I'm Thinking of Ending Things must have been arduous to make, and it's excruciatingly tedious to watch."[23]
^Which is later revealed to be "Bonedog", by the poet Eva H.D.
^The young woman's monologue is taken directly from Pauline Kael's review of the film. A collection of her reviews (For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies) can be seen in Jake's childhood home.[2]
^Reminiscent of "Dream Ballet" performed in Oklahoma!. The ballet features the young woman's dancer taking the role of Laurey, Jake's dancer taking the role of Curly, and the janitor's dancer taking the role of Jud.
^The Nobel Prize acceptance speech is taken from John Nash's acceptance speech during the finale of A Beautiful Mind, the DVD of which is seen on a shelf in Jake's childhood bedroom.[2]
^ abIn the high school stage production of Oklahoma! whose rehearsal the janitor watches.
^Seen in a brief sequence with the janitor at the high school that, based on the students' clothing and hairstyles, appears to be set in the 1980s.
^ abcdIn the romantic comedy film the janitor watches.
