I’m Thinking of Ending Things — Charlie Kaufman’s Best Movie yet?

I don’t know why I torture myself watching Charlie Kaufman movies. I love them and hate them at the same time — they’re always so full of literary references and philosophical ideas that I feel like I need a notebook, an art degree, and someone to hug every time I watch them. I also end up needing to watch these movies multiple times (including rewinds), but I still think they’re the best movies I’ve seen. Not because I like confusing movies that need to be watched multiple times to be understood, but because they’re movies that I enjoy on the first watch as much on the first watch as I do on the fifth.

I’ve always liked Charlie Kaufman’s movies ever since I watched Eternal Sunshine, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York (I had to lie down for a long time after watching that one). Nobody really writes or makes movies like he does, so when I heard he would be adapting ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ by Iain Reid, I picked up the book. Figured it would be a good way to fill the time while I waited for the movie. Honestly, I didn’t like the book very much. Well, it was okay but the alternating viewpoints between before “the incident” and after made it too predictable — this is bad if the big twist of your story is “it was all a fantasy”. If you know the story’s destination, the only reason you’d stick around for the whole thing is the journey. I personally wasn’t very invested in the journey.

However, this was going to become a Charlie Kaufman film, and there’s no way he can make a bad one. I had no doubt that Charlie would have any trouble at all adapting the weirdness, just watch any of his movies. I was, however, worried about him being able to capture the eeriness of the novel. The novel is a darker, eerie story about a woman who is unsure about her relationship, coming to doubt everything she knows. The movie, on the other hand, certainly isn’t as dark as it’s source. I’d actually consider it as a darker twin to Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. Both movies take place inside the mind of a character with an imaginary girlfriend, both of them, on some level, deal with regrets over the past and escaping from them and both of them really depress me.

Spoilers ahead: You have been warned

Like all of us, the real main character (The Janitor) wishes things were better, but realises that he comes to terms with things he can’t have anymore since he missed his chance, and this leads to him “ending things” in the harsh coldness of that winter night. It’s very human to wish we had more time — more time to spend with our parents, more time to make better decisions, more time to meet someone, and more time to fix what we broke. However, the Janitor realises it’s too late for him. When he meets the young woman and she, in a quite revealing monologue, explains what really happened between her, Jake and the janitor, he says that as long as Jake is in the building, Jake (in reality, the Janitor) is safe from reality and his own harsh thoughts. The scene that follows shows two dancers representing Jake and her falling in love and getting married, only to be torn apart by an evil Janitor when he finally accepts the truth of his story:

He is the villain in his own story.

This is a movie about the roads not taken, the regret we feel about chances we didn’t take. The Janitor and Jake are the same person and the young woman is someone he has created in his mind in a fantasy to distract himself from recurring thoughts of “ending things”, i.e of suicide. The whole movie is this man trying to find the ideal fantasy where he has a loving partner, parents who appreciate him, and a happy life, but the constant and intrusive suicidal thoughtsalways return to put him down. He tries to imagine different times, and different jobs and names for his girlfriend. Once the Janitor leaves the school however, his fantasy is shattered by reality and he breaks down crying, naked and freezing in the cold night.

There’s so much detail put into every frame of this film, I pick up something new every time I watch it. I could write a whole other article about the details: the way the road trip story intertwines with the Janitor’s daily routine and the meanings behind the familiar faces between them, the shot of Jake changing the radio of the car which is actually a truck. The smaller details — makeup on Toni Collette’s teeth for when her character is older and the names of DVDs in Jake’s room that reflect his self hatred (“Futile Attempts At Success” is my personal favourite), the way each character seems to be adjusting themselves because they’re coming from the same mind. There’s a lot of thought and purpose behind every choice made in this movie.

All these details are sprinkled throughout the movie, the movie doesn’t try to save them for the end. All the details in the editing, the structure, the story, acting (and everything else) all stem from the idea that the Janitor is regretting not having made better choices in his life and is now out of time. It’s a very simple and relatable movie about ending up somewhere you hate and living a life you didn’t want to live, disguised as a psychological existential horror film. And I think that’s genius.

I think this is why I love Charlie Kaufman’s movies.
They take simple concepts like thinking about a different life, or mending a broken relationship, and use it to wind together so many ideas and themes into something different.

If you haven’t seen I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, I’d recommend you do. I absolutely loved watching this movie. It’s a much smaller-scale movie than Synecdoche, New York, and it’s not as outright weird as Anomalisa, but trust me, this article only scratches the surface of the movie’s brilliance. There’s only one question to resolve now. Did you like it as well?

by A. R. Hatim