I'm Thinking of Ending Things

 

Charlie Kaufman on the set with Jessie Buckley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS                 B                                                                    USA  (134 mi)  2020  d:  Charlie Kaufman 

But when there’s a moon in my winder                                                                                          And it slants down a beam ‘cross my bed                                                                                                                                            Then the shadder of a tree starts a-dancin’ on the wall                                                                  And a dream starts a-dancin’ in my head                                                                                                                                                                                                                              And all the things that I wish fer                                                                                                      Turn out like I want them to be                                                                                                     And I’m better than that smart-aleck cowhand                                                                             Who thinks he is better’n me!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               And the girl I want                                                                                                                           Ain’t afraid of my arms                                                                                                                 And her own soft arms keep me warm                                                                                             And her long, yeller hair                                                                                                            Falls across my face                                                                                                                                                  Jist like the rain in a storm!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The floor creaks                                                                                                                                             The door squeaks                                                                                                                                           And the mouse starts a-nibblin’ on the broom                                                                            And the sun flicks my eyes—                                                                                                          It was all a pack o’ lies!                                                                                                                 I’m awake in a lonely room

—Lonely Room, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, sung by Jud Fry from Oklahoma!, (song omitted from the movie version), I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) - Lonely Room - HQ YouTube (2:50)

Let’s see, there’s dreary, drearier, and dreariest, and this miserablist film deals with all of that, to which you can add dark and chillingly morbid, with a touch of the surreal.  Made by the same writer/director of SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008), which was like a towering architectural experiment that continually explored new regions, feeling-ever expanding, where the performances themselves were mind-blowing, this is a different animal altogether, spare and minimal, by comparison, a psychological drama with beautiful, relatable monologues, largely taking place in the minds of two people with their thoughts often interchanged, creating a uniquely bizarre labyrinthian landscape that explores hidden regions of an untapped subconscious, yet plays out in a dry and undramatic fashion, often in-your-face and over the top, bordering on farce, as point-of-view is continually changing, altering reality as we know it, plunging into a netherworld that may or may not stand up to scrutiny.  It’s a baffling exercise exploring a strange malaise that exists between two persons, a young couple, Jake (Jesse Plemons, assuming the Philip Seymour Hoffman role), as understated as a character can be, just an ordinary guy harboring dark secrets, often seeming ghoulishly cold in temperament, and his more kind and affable girlfriend, grad student Lucy (Jessie Buckley), who may also be a waitress, artist, or quantum physicist, with most of the interior thoughts initially coming from her perspective, as they head out into farm country during a raging blizzard of snow for a family dinner to meet his parents, David Thewlis and Toni Collette, who are completely off-the-wall, changing age with each appearance, where the subconscious eventually takes hold, leaving reality a thing of the past, leaving viewers scratching their heads, wondering just what the Hell is happening.  To that extent, it’s largely a puzzle picture that feels overly intellectualized, internally analyzing what’s taking place, which has a way of taking all the life out of it, often leaving viewers perplexed, dumbfounded by an extreme detachment with what’s taking place onscreen, featuring plenty of self-loathing, offering questions of mortality, common themes in Kaufman’s works, which always seem like an exercise in self-analysis. While there is plenty of really cool stuff on display here, a few fabulous sequences that feel genuinely inspired, it’s overloaded with a bleak and depressing vantage point, including suicidal idealizations, with suggestions that these two have no business being together, where eventually it feels lifeless and too flat, as if all the air has dissipated from the room.  Whatever expectations one may have coming into the film, this director is sure to obliterate them all, creating an abstract, heavily symbolic work that will challenge each and every viewer, becoming a moody, self-absorbed road trip where the side adventures eventually take over and dominate the landscape.        

Adapted from Iain Reid’s 2016 novel of the same name, this is the only film from this director that includes another writer as the source material, which is in itself a curious relationship, much like the one depicted onscreen, as Kaufman has written some superlative screenplays, like Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich (1999) and ADAPTATION (2002), as well as Michel Gondry’s extraordinary ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004).  That said, he is considered one of the most strikingly original filmwriters of our generation, with few peers that can compare, but this adaptation may actually be his least successful effort largely because it doesn’t originate with him, but is instead interpreted by him, remaining remarkably faithful to the source material’s structure and basic plot.  While he may have felt a personal connection with this book, and puts his owns stamp on it, in many ways the book is a good deal clearer and more transparent than the movie, shot by Polish cinematographer Łukasz Żal, with Kaufman adding his own touch of ambiguity, veering into fantasy, which can be something of a mindfuck of a film.  There’s something distressing and even annoying about the ending, becoming overly uncomfortable, forcing viewers away from Lucy’s vantage point, where she has been a pleasant host as narrator that one easily identifies with, and turns instead to a less likeable Jake, a character we don’t entirely trust, knowing Lucy is uneasy about continuing a relationship with him, yet he becomes the focus, where the entire film may actually be seen through his eyes, which may leave viewers flabbergasted.  In more ways than one, it’s all about Jake, yet he’s the most unreliable character in the room, subject to violent mood swings, not altogether likeable, harboring a secret life throughout the entire picture, possibly inventing Lucy as an extension of himself, creating a more likeable side, where the truth of the matter is he leads a sad and depressing life, talented in many ways, but unrecognized, leading an uneventful and anonymous life, where his crushing loneliness may be a key to understanding the entire picture.  While it’s a bizarre depiction, Jake is not nearly as socially engaging as the much more charismatic Lucy, who tends to dominate the movie, guided by her charm and easy appeal, where one of the most powerful moments is when she reads a wrenchingly dramatic poem while they are traveling in a car, Bonedog YouTube (4:43), not the kind typically used in films, showing greater range and extreme depth of character, taking the audience by surprise, as it simply comes out of nowhere, Bonedog. a poem by Eva H.D. | by Marianne | Medium.  Later in the film we are surprised to learn that it comes from a book of poems attributed to another author, yet was supposedly originated by Lucy, who sees herself as something of a poet.  This is but one of the recurring fault lines offering clues that things are not what they seem.      

Certainly one possibility is that this entire film may exist inside one man’s head, developing illusions of grandeur to avoid seeing what a pathetic wretch he’s become.  Accordingly, most of the film takes place in a moving car in the middle of a raging snowstorm, yet for all their efforts, it seemingly goes nowhere.  Lucy is introduced as an early narrator, where all of the focus is on her, yet her name and occupation change multiple times in the film, while her storyline nearly disappears by the end.  Nonetheless, early on, she quotes Oscar Wilde, offering a curious viewpoint about how we continuously live through others, “Most people are other people:  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”  About this same time, Jake flips on the radio, playing a song from a musical that Jake immediately recognizes is a passage from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!  While he downplays his interest in musicals, he rattles off more than a dozen or so (the list keeps growing) that are among his favorites, intercut by a mysterious scene with footage of an elderly janitor (Guy Boyd) working at a high school, where he sees students rehearsing the same musical.  By the time they arrive at his parent’s farmhouse, they are nowhere to be seen, while Jake is uneasy and uncomfortable, nervously awaiting their arrival, with Lucy struck by a picture of Jake that resembles how she looked as a child, becoming confused.  By the time his parents do finally arrive, they are all pleasantries, also a little bit strange and eccentric, even manic, feeling more like an out-of-body experience, with Lucy telling them the story of how they met, while also showing them some photographs of some landscape paintings she has made that are stored on her phone.  As Lucy wanders through the house, including Jake’s childhood room, much of what happens in this film seems to have originated there, as she finds books that strangely play out in strange variations throughout the film, and posters for exhibitions of Ralph Albert Blakelock paintings that resemble those she showed earlier as her own, while also discovering the same paintings with the name Jake affixed, all of which leads her to question the nature of her relationship with Jake, his family, and everything she sees in the world around her.  Each time his parents appear after dinner, they represent a different period in their lives, shifting from young to old and back to young again, with Jake undergoing intense personal encounters with them that seem vastly different than just this one evening, as if time has been consolidated into just a few moments.  At home, Jake never looks more depressed, exuding the sense of a loner caught between the continually changing fabric of fact and fiction.

It is only after Lucy extends a great effort that they finally leave, but Jake doesn’t share that sense of urgency, instead commenting that she drank too much wine at dinner, comparing her to the Cassavetes movie character Mabel Longhetti, played by Gena Rowlands, perhaps because they both want so much to be liked and loved, which leads to a bizarre critique of the Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which she over-analyzes from an intellectual perspective, repeating word-for-word parts of a Pauline Kael review, Letterboxd on Twitter: "Pauline Kael's December 9, 1974 New ..., which largely misses the point and is counterintuitive, as the beauty of Cassavetes films lies in the truth of his emotional connections.  Nonetheless, this is only the first of a few diversions, stopping at Tulsey Town, an all-night ice-cream drive-through, before getting into a heated argument over what she describes as rape lyrics to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Jordan - Baby, It's Cold Outside ... YouTube (2:45), a popular 40’s song that won the Oscar for Best Song in 1949.  Lucy basically personifies affirmation, however, unlike Jake, always striving to be better, briefly impersonating a virologist, “Everything wants to live, Jake.  Viruses are just one more example of everything.  Even fake, crappy movie ideas want to live.  Like, they grow in your brain, replacing real ideas.  That’s what makes them dangerous.”  But the biggest surprise is making a strange detour in the night to visit his old high school, perhaps awkwardly realizing his life is not on the trajectory he wanted, where he seems to be going backwards and forward in time, perhaps inventing memories to protect him from the dull and insipid life he’s really leading, filled with nothing but regrets, mysteriously wandering out of the car, where his absence creates a mood of suspicion and dread, perhaps even anticipation of horror elements, with Lucy begrudgingly following sometime later, completely blindsided by his absence.  Inside the hallways of the school the pace of the film slows to a crawl, and in a striking transition an alternative fantasy life evolves, including a surreal ballet dance sequence, with Jake and Lucy morphing into Broadway dancer Ryan Steele and New York City Ballet soloist Unity Phelan, observed by the lone janitor on duty, I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Ballet scene YouTube (2:25).  Evolving even further, a larger fantasy life takes over, altering one’s sense of consciousness, changing the film trajectory into a fictional universe where Jake imagines himself an old man receiving recognition and acclaim for living a fulfilled life, mimicking a scene from A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001), I'm Thinking of Ending Things vs. A Beautiful Mind - Side by Side Comparison YouTube (2:39) before stepping onto a musical set and singing a number from Oklahoma! about envisioning a better, happier life, only to realize it’s all been a dream, I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) - Lonely Room - HQ YouTube (2:50).  Released on Netflix in the year of Covid, which presents its own challenges, the underlying motivation of this film feels designed to overcome powerful feelings of depression, but the downbeat subject and doppelgänger universe may leave many viewers even further alienated and confused, where something we heard earlier from Lucy reverberates with greater meaning only at the end of the picture, “Other animals live in the present.  Humans cannot, so they invented hope.”

Asako I & II (Netemo sametemo)

Actors Masahiro Higashide (left to right) and Karata Erika with director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi at Cannes, 2018  

ASAKO I & II (Netemo sametemo)       B                    

Japan (119 mi)  2018 d:  Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Premiering at Cannes, this film was overshadowed by other Asian films grabbing the spotlight, Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 Top Ten List #8 Burning (Beoning) and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku).   Seemingly lightyears removed from Hamaguchi’s earlier film, a probing five-hour marathon intensely exploring the disenchanted lives of a group of middle class women in 2017 Top Ten List #1 Happy Hour (Happî Awâ), this is instead a whimsical double romance conveyed with the innocence of a children’s story, with a piano score reminiscent of Miyazaki composer Joe Hisaishi, yet the accent is on first love, with intimations that something altogether different is consuming the soul, enraptured with the sight of someone altogether new.  Asako (Karata Erika), whose name is an anagram of the city of Osaka where she lives, has the appearance of a porcelain doll, overly polite, soft-spoken, but also a young beauty, where her fortunate circumstances seem to revolve around that essential fact, especially with this story playing out like a fairy tale.  Adapted from a novel by Tomoka Shibasaki, the film explores these surface issues, examining the effect of looks in a relationship, as Asako falls in love with two men with identical looks, where the underlying attraction to the first seems to extend to the second, especially since the two men couldn’t be more different in other ways.  But all that is thrown out the window, as this is an infatuation romance, with the girl taken by the man’s strikingly good looks, falling head over heels in love, with little thought of the man’s point of view.  Essentially a first person narrative, told exclusively through the eyes of Asako, we follow her as she eyes an art exposition of Shigeo Gochō’s photography series, “Self and Others,” at the National Museum of Art in Osaka.  Gochō suffered from a rare degenerative disease which stunted his growth and caused his premature death, dramatically altering his perspective which is reflected in his work of staged portraits.  Something similar happens to one of the side characters, offering a unique window into the real meaning of love.  They key here is viewing a subject through a photographer’s lens, which essentially shows how someone looks, but only from the outside, as the viewer themselves must provide the internalization.  This film works in much the same way, as Asako is blown away by the casual nature of an onlooker in the museum who barely pauses to view the photographs, Baku (Masahiro Higashide), struck by his ruggedly handsome looks, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with shaggy hair, following him out the door and up the stairs where kids are setting off firecrackers.  The explosions cause each to turn around and look, seeing the other staring back at them, with Baku (camera on his feet as he moves towards Asako) taking her in his arms and offering that romantic screen kiss.  Fate has taken hold in the opening scene to the surging sounds of an electro-pop score by Tofubeats.  The film flips the script, as cinema typically expresses a male gaze eying female beauty, right out of the Éric Rohmer playbook, while this accentuates male body fascination through the female gaze.   

Capturing the euphoric rush of first love, given a mythical rendering, suggesting love has a mystical quality, this bubble is quickly burst by Asako’s best friend Haruyo (Sairi Itô) who calls him “bad news” and “a heartbreaker.”  True enough, we find them taking a motorcycle ride around the city, and while we don’t see what caused the accident, the motorcycle is totaled, apparently an act of recklessness, yet miraculously the two riders end up unscathed, seen smooching on the ground in each other’s arms as pedestrians gather to stare in utter amazement.  Their picturebook romance seems like one for the ages, though early on we discover Baku has a history of going out for a walk and not coming back for weeks, a quirky habit attributed to his curiosity, but also an accompanying indifference of others (the polar opposite of the photographer Shigeo Gochō), driving Asako into panic attacks, with Baku promising to change his ways.  Nonetheless, after about six months, he tells Asako he’s going out to buy shoes and never returns.  Skipping ahead a few years, Asako now lives in Tokyo working in a gourmet coffee shop around the corner from a corporate hi-rise building where we meet a rising junior executive in the sake industry, Ryôhei, played by the same actor Higashide (both characters curiously speaking different Japanese dialects), dressed in corporate attire, cleaning up after a business conference with his work partner and friend Kosuke (Kōji Seto).  Imagine her surprise when she comes in to collect the coffee pot, eying Ryôhei, who she immediately identifies as Baku, even touching his face, but then runs out in a hurry when she realizes her glaring mistake.  Ryôhei thinks he’s been mistaken for a tapir (baku), but amusingly finds no resemblance.  Nonetheless, she’s left a haunting impression on him.  Ryôhei is the polar opposite of her first boyfriend, well-groomed, a perfect gentleman, considerate of others, while following a traditional path to financial success.  The first encounter, however, scares Asako, believing it can’t be true, still shook by the reverberations of heartbreak from her first relationship.  What follows is like something from a Hong Sang-soo movie, literally mirroring the first part of the film, with another encounter of Gochō’s photographs (the same exposition on tour, now in Tokyo), and an eerily similar look across a crowded street, finally embracing each other, yet it’s all surfaces.  One of the more intriguing scenes involves Asako’s friend Maya (Rio Yamashita), an aspiring actress, watching a scene on television at a dinner gathering with Ryôhei and Kosuke, where Kosuke grows irritated at her performance, finding it all wrong, having studied a bit of Chekhov himself, but his scorching critique attacking the narcissism of the performance is refuted by Asako, who is genuinely moved, with each offering cogently honest viewpoints that seem to bring them all closer together as friends. 

With an emphasis on fate, Ryôhei attends one of Maya’s plays (hoping to run into Asako) when a real-life disaster occurs, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Wasurenai - Never Forget - Japan 3.11) and caused more than 10,000 deaths, the worst in Japanese history, which plays as a backdrop to the utter chaos it provides on the streets of Tokyo when buildings crumble and trains stop running.  On the long walk back home, through the panicked and crowded streets, Ryôhei and Asako eye one another (this time the camera follows Asako’s feet), running to embrace each other with another romanticized screen kiss.  This fusion of historical reality into a fairy tale romance certainly adds a unique complexity, including visits the two of them make to the coastal town of Sensei during the rebuilding efforts, which adds to the collective recovery of the nation, all playing into a motif of trauma survival.  With a thematic emphasis on empathy, developing a compassionate understanding of others, the film takes a seismic shift which only highlights how easy it is to lose one’s bearings.  Jumping forward five years, Ryôhei is transferred to Osaka, hoping they can buy a house there and be married, which is the moment Asako chooses to tell him about Baku, which doesn’t faze him (apparently knowing all along), adamant in his love, happy at the prospects of living a long and happy life together with their cat Jintan that becomes synonymous with their union.  With Haruyo returning to town, she, Maya and boyfriend Kosuke treat the happy couple to a celebratory dinner before their departure, which has an added surprise, as Baku (now an infamous fashion model, billboards seen all over town), arrives unexpectedly, whooshing Asako out of there in a rush, running away together without a word, an act of liberation or chaos?  Throughout the film Asako’s character has exhibited a kind of transparency and warmth, where the audience is able to see right through her, but not here, as the pain inflicted is disturbing, suggesting she hasn’t grown since her earlier relationship, despite hints of maturity.  Thinking only of herself aligns her with the selfie generation, bordering on narcissism, but is completely out of character with everything we know about her.  Beyond bewildering, this entire section suggests an induced dream, as if it never happened in real life, but things like this happen, associating an idealistic fascination with first love, handled in a distinct and uniquely female way.  Baku is a celebrity and a star, a cultural sensation where young girls grow ecstatic just thinking about him, a subject of idol worshipping.  Asako has fallen into this same delusional pit, retreating to girlish expectations, but he turns out to be much the same, indifferent to all the adulation.  It’s as if they hopped into a time machine and went back in time, only to discover the world has changed around them, with the earthquake’s shocking ramifications among them, so how could they pretend all that never happened?  It’s a curious development, concluding with a hint of ambiguity, as there’s no happily ever after scenario, yet also no real reconciliation.  These same lingering questions persist throughout the troubled lives of the four women struggling in 2017 Top Ten List #1 Happy Hour (Happî Awâ), with Hamaguchi becoming a modern era specialist in inner turmoil and trauma survival, calling into question what really constitutes happiness.  This film examines that illusion, providing a thread of realism that’s hard to turn away from, using the ocean as a mirror into the soul (with its unpredictable wild ragings and habitual rhythms), featuring exquisite cinematography by Yasuyuki Sasaki, but viewers will have to extract deeper insinuations on their own.