Charlie Kaufman is stuck inside his own head

By Jake Skubish

“That’s why I like road trips,” Jake (Jesse Plemons) tells his girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) as they travel along a bleak winter road on the way to meet his parents for dinner. “It’s good to remind yourself the world’s larger than the inside of your own head.”

It’s an ironic start to I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the latest from writer-director Charlie Kaufman, as Kaufman has always been an artist consumed by what’s happening inside our minds at the expense of the world outside of them. His films often suggest that no such distinction can be made at all, that the world perceived is only a refraction of our internal selves. 

I’m Thinking of Ending Things blurs this line more than any of his previous work. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, we know when we are inside a character’s head and when we are not. In Ending Things, which debuted on Netflix this weekend, it’s a struggle to identify linear coherence, and we are forced to hold on tight to Kaufman’s expedition into the absurdity of existence.

The plot of the film, based on a novel by Iain Reid, seems simple enough: a woman goes on a road trip to meet her boyfriend’s parents for the first time, even though an inner dialogue reveals she is already having doubts about the relationship. Something is clearly off from the beginning, however, and things only get weirder as the film goes along: Buckley’s character’s name, clothes, and job start to shift; Jake’s parents quickly get older, and younger again; and Kaufman continues to cut to a lonely janitor cleaning at a local high school. These loose ends come into focus with the film’s ending, as we discover how this road trip exists outside reality for Jake and his girlfriend.

I found I’m Thinking of Ending Things to be an exhilarating journey for about 40 minutes. After that, it becomes a chore. It deceptively places Buckley at the center of the story, but Ending Things is really Jake’s movie. Does the film have a genuine viewpoint as it interrogates existential dread and the passage of time? Sure. But it’s a viewpoint too often made synonymous with such lofty ideas, and all of Kaufman’s inventiveness is revealed to be in the service of sad sack white guy self-pity.

The film also excoriates the ability of art to capture reality and all its anxieties. Sometimes this criticism is integrated into the film well, and one condescending reference to Robert Zemeckis made me laugh. But references to William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Pauline Kael, and David Foster Wallace are less sprinkled throughout Ending Things than wedged into it. At one point Buckley’s protagonist remarks, “‘Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.’ That’s an Oscar Wilde quote.”

It’s a self-reflexive line that doubles as a coyly aware self-criticism of Kaufman’s own tendency to bring other artists into the dialogue. But preempting a criticism doesn’t negate its ability to be made. Kaufman is making art to tackle the horror of existence but mocks the very possibility of doing so, brandishing this contradiction to obscure the fact that, whether or not art can capture the absurdity of life, his film certainly can’t.

I wish Kaufman had devoted some of the time spent pontificating through the lens of other artists to crafting a visually engaging context for his ideas. Nearly all of the film takes place either inside a car on a dark, snowy night or inside the drab walls of Jake’s parents’ house. For a film about the imaginative excesses of the human mind, Ending Things is a dreary and repetitive visual production.

The best of Kaufman, whether it’s the struggle to craft a screenplay in Adaptation or the sexual awakenings in Being John Malkovich, is about people living inside their own heads who struggle with the process of emerging from that cocoon and engaging with the world, even if that process is ultimately meaningless and absurd. I’m Thinking of Ending Things finds an artist unwilling to engage with this process, and retreating further into his own head to produce a real bummer of a movie. “Sometimes the thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action,” Buckley says in the opening monologue of the film. It’s an interesting idea. But the potential unreality of action doesn’t mean we should eschew it altogether.

What is real, however, is Buckley herself. Her character gets buried at times under the avalanche of Kaufman’s peculiarities, but the performance always breaks through. She’s a malleable actress, and always manages to contort her emotional intention to whatever the scene needs. I can’t wait to see her many, many great performances sure to come.