Charlie Kaufman channels David Lynch in this eerie, creepy relationship drama that really knows how to get under your skin.
Jessie Buckley, who gave an award-worthy performance in "Wild Rose" last year, does so again here, as a woman meeting her boyfriend's parents for the first time. Much of the film takes place in his car, as they travel to and from his childhood home in an Oklahoma blizzard. These scenes give Buckley and Jessie Plemmons, also giving a terrific performance as her boyfriend, long exchanges of dialogue that tease out the dynamic of this particular relationship, and the dynamic between men and women in general, and a dissection of the film "A Woman Under the Influence" (Buckley recites Pauline Kael's review of the film in character as Gena Rowlands), and includes a stop at an isolated ice cream stand, the film's most Lynchian moment, where a girl with a rash gives Buckley a vague warning. Much of the rest of the film takes place in Plemmons' parents house, where David Thewlis and Toni Collette play versions of Plemmons' mom and dad at all ages, from perky housewife to doddering dementia to dying in a hospital bed, and host perhaps one of the most awkward dinners ever to appear in a film. Then there are the scenes set in Plemmons' old high school, where a janitor (Plemmons as an old man?) roams the halls and doubles of Buckley and Plemmons reenact the ballet scene from "Oklahoma!" in the school corridors.
What is "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" about? If that's the first question you ask before deciding whether or not to watch a movie, you won't like this one. I imagine different people will think it's about different things. Certainly it's about getting old. It's also about getting old without the comfort of believing that life has any purpose, or that there's anything waiting for us in the great beyond. It's about women and their relationships with men. It's about Jessie Buckley's character. Until it's not and it's instead about Jessie Plemmons' character, who gets the final scene of the film all to himself, a rendition of the song "Lonely Room" (again from "Oklahoma!") during which he comes to the conclusion that the fantasies on which we build our lives don't exist and we have to take whatever we can to most closely approximate them. It's a claustrophobic and deeply unsettling film, as much because of its aesthetics as because of its enigmatic mysteries.
Is it a good film? I think it's very good, but I will admit that it didn't linger in my head as much as I thought it would while I was watching it. It kind of made my skin crawl in the moment, but it left me feeling like I was going to get all there was to get from it on a first viewing, and it didn't leave me wanting to watch it again to untangle its riddles.
Grade: A
