I'm Thinking of Ending Things' (2020) review: Everything we see here, all of it...bone

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged, life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

-Virginia Woolf

I’m thinking of the scene when the young girl was introduced to Jake’s parents. His father ignored Jake almost the whole evening. I am thinking of another scene where the car stops at the farmhouse. Jake took the young girl direct to the barn. Here, he recounts a story that his father, caretaker of their livestock, forgot to take care of his pigs for days. Eventually, he found that one pig was being eaten alive by maggots. There were two pigs, another one was being eaten alive by his lonely life, unreceived love, unfulfilled hopes. A new movie by the brilliant writer-director Charlie Kaufman ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ is a surreal, multi-layered jumble of what is and who is real or imaginary. “Be careful out there, the roads are treacherous,” a dialogue of the film applies to you too if you decide to watch it.

Poster courtesy: Arko Chakraborty

I’m thinking how ingeniously Kaufman has presented his concepts about time, love, hope, life, age, loneliness, vulnerability, uncertainty in an artistic way. On the surface, a woman with her boyfriend goes on a car trip to meet his parents on a farmhouse passing through a snowstorm. But actually, it’s we who are passing through the frigid projection of his fragmented memories, figments of imagination, feelings of loneliness, loss, which leaves us chopped and frozen. It seems there are two different people with a different set of minds, one is a painter, poet, physicist, cinema critic, and another one was just awarded “You there, you work very hard, you’re not very bright, but we are impressed you tried anyway” but we see two different selves of Jake, one is who he is right now, the disappointed one, another is who he always wanted to be. Interestingly we are seeing an old man working as a janitor at some school. It’s clear that he is an old self of Jake, but the road trip is his imagination, or dream, or some past incident that gets clear eventually.

I’m thinking of how highly symbolical the movie is:  

1) It simply begins with ‘ending things.’ The young girl to whom Jake met many years ago at a trivia night but couldn’t approach her, since then he is imaging about her always. She also personified the desired self of Jake. So, today Jake might be thinking to end these imaginations of her. He might be thinking of end everything from his life he ever desired. He might be thinking of ending his life.

2) ‘Lucy,’ a woman who inspired Wordsworth to write five beautiful poems. Whoever is familiar with these works already know what the young woman meant by ‘LIKE ME!’ as ‘Lucy’ was never a real person, she was a fictitious character or a literary device used by the poet to express his certain thoughts and feelings. 

3) Interesting symbol is of the poem ‘Bonedog.’ Not just its represents Jake and his life, but when the girl says directly into our eyes that “everything you see now, is just …bone,” that means we do not see everything, something is always out of the frame and it perfectly has shown through the 4:3 aspect ratio of the camera.

I’m thinking of many other things. Cold and icy weather symbolizes the inner emotions of Jake. Jake believes himself as the pig – less adored, abandoned, ill animal, frame from childhood simply suggests Jake and the girl are the same person, he keeps forgetting small details - jumbles ages of parents – hallucinates the pig at the end means not his father, but he might be the patient of dementia or Alzheimer, and I have no idea how many others I am missing.

I’m thinking “how long does it take to get hypothermia?” At the dance scene, Jake and the young girl are replaced by the dancers, happy, together, about to do marriage, but suddenly a look-alike of the janitor comes and kills Jake. It may symbolize how years ago, an incapable, hesitated, doubtful self of Jake killed a promising self of him. (the scene where the real Jake clears the mess around the imaginary Jake gives me goosebumps!) But the end is positive! His final imagination gives pain and happiness together. He finally appreciates himself. He receives a Nobel prize for whatever work and struggle he has done. For the first time, the blue color is bright, and the blizzard inside and outside has stopped for good.

I’m thinking of T.S. Eliot, one of my favourite modernist poets. His incredible poem ‘The Waste Land’ kept coming in my mind. Why? The movie and the verse have myriad allusions of great works. The poet and the director not just showing their prodigious knowledge of varied art but also presenting them in their work as they are suggesting a great art lifts another art to the sublimity. I’m also thinking of Virginia Woolf, the great ‘stream of consciousness’ novel writer, she says when a writer decides not to follow norms, he creates something innovative and original. That’s why I love surreal art, literature, or cinema, its unconventional. And after Lynch, Svankmajer, and Aronofsky, I will happily add Kaufman to a list of my favourite directors who have given a transcendent level to surreal cinema.

I’m still thinking endlessly about the film and I think I will not end thinking about it.