Linklater and Lynch in a Blender: I’m Thinking of Ending Things

As such an all-encompassing, yet little used in real life phrase, “I’m thinking of ending things” packs a weighty punch as an internal sentiment. Those of a suicidally-minded nature will, of course, instantly flash to life as the “thing” they’re thinking of ending. But in the case of the young woman sometimes called Lucy (Jessie Buckley, the Irish actress recently recognizable from Judy and Dolittle), it’s the second immediately thought of “thing” she wants to end: a relationship, which is, for some people, and in some embodiments, not unlike invoking a death of the self. 

At the same time, however, I’m Thinking of Ending Things (based on Iain Reid’s 2016 novel of the same name) is about one’s own reconciliation with, once and for all, terminating their delusions of grandeur. Of believing their “great plans” for a “better life” are even remotely achievable from their station down at heel. Or that they’re more special than any other person from the same background, whether socioeconomic or otherwise. Opening on scenes of the fantastical 70s-inspired wallpaper at Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) parents’ (played with eerie perfection by Toni Collette and David Thewlis) farmhouse, a shot of a print of Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” feels more than deliberate. For what is he doing? Standing on a cliff. Perhaps thinking of ending things (even if this goes against the whimsical interpretation of the Romanticists). Jumping. Taking a plunge, whether literally or metaphorically. For Lucy, it’s the latter. She knows that things with Jake just aren’t working out, and they never will. 

As though describing the very premise of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, she narrates, “Once this thought arrives, it sticks, it lingers, it dominates… The idea is new, but it feels old at the same time. When did it start? What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me, but planted in my mind, pre-developed.” Whatever the case, she knows that to continue any further in this roughly seven-week relationship is a lost cause, a waste of her precious time. And God knows she’s got other shit to do, like paint, or write poetry, or be a physicist (her mutating professions and pursuits are loosely shifted throughout the film as the narrative becomes more surreal, more in the spirit of Mulholland Drive). And yet, despite knowing this, that it will come to nothing, she explains, “Maybe it’s human nature to keep going in the face of this knowledge. The alternative requires too much energy. Decisiveness. People stay in unhealthy relationships because it’s easier. Basic physics. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. People tend to stay in relationships past their expiration date. It’s Newton’s first law of emotion.” As she rattles off these thoughts, it’s apparent that Jake can hear what she’s thinking, although never “concretely” confirmed. But his reactions, his uneasiness–that “unspoken connection” Lucy says they have–all imply he can hear everything. Almost as though… they’re the same person. 

Their lengthy car ride conversation (one might estimate that the car ride portions of this film take up about a third of it) feels in the style of something Richard Linklater would pull (though these two aren’t nearly as scintillated by one another as Jesse and Céline), with long monologues passing as A/B conversations, like Lucy reciting a macabre poem called “Bonedog” (actually by Eva H.D., from the same poetry collection, Rotten Perfect Mouth, she will later find in Jake’s room–was it all a spillout from Jake’s head–her own–the entire time, or is it as Oscar Wilde said, quoted internally by Lucy, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”? This, naturally, is Kaufman’s meta self-deprecation about doing the same thing in the majority of his work).

But the car ride to the farm is merely an amuse-bouche for the strangeness that’s about to unfold. Some real Twin Peaks shit, if you will–and one can’t deny that David Lynch would surely appreciate the spirit of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, he being among two key auteur inspirations harkening back to that aforementioned Wilde quote. The wholesome, small town “Americana” vibe being belied by a sinister underbelly is, indeed, everywhere, including a scene of two identical-looking blondes tittering at the window of a soft serve ice cream joint in the middle of nowhere as their more “homely” coworker with strange scars serves Lucy instead. What’s more, the increasingly noticeable trend of being stuck in some kind of sick and twisted time loop (see: Dark, The Umbrella Academy and Tenet for the year’s most recent examples) emphasizes the present state of hopelessness humanity is in. Where once, say, in Kennedy’s 1960s, there seemed to be a wellspring of hope for “the future,” now there is only an ominous sense of dread, with the picturing of an increasingly decrepit population as a manifestation of the lack of vitality in our current state of existence. Then again, it’s as Lucy says: humans “invented hope” to convince themselves it isn’t all as hopeless as it patently is. Just another reason the animals “below” us are able to go about their preprogrammed business more freely because of their lack of cognizance; that lack allows them to live in the present–without fear or worry of such concepts as “future” or “death.” Yet one more way in which man is cursed: through his own self-awareness. 

At one point, Jake irritatedly notes on the ride back to the city, “I don’t think we know how to be human anymore. Our society, our culture, people.” Kaufman, not for the first time, proffers that this is in large part due to, for all intents and purposes, seeing “too many movies” (ironic, of course, that the person who does this ends up becoming a screenwriter to perpetuate the disease). That our expectations are doomed to forever be at odds with reality. Case in point is the melancholy janitor we see interspersed throughout the film watching a Robert Zemeckis-directed (fake, yes, but way to throw shade at this filmmaker’s usual brand of schmaltz) rom-com about a waitress named Yvonne (Colby Minifie)–one of the people’s names who calls Lucy while she’s at Jake’s parents’ house–and the lovelorn man (Jason Ralph) who adheres to the usual “romantic” formula of stalking her at her workplace. His “enthusiasm” translates to screaming out that he’s in love with her, resulting in her getting fired. To this end, Kaufman is admitting to being guilty of playing this card in his own movies of the past (see: Elijah Wood in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie which also bears many aesthetic similarities to this one, namely the snowscapes). Admitting to being guilty himself, as a man who has been fed a steady diet of films like these for decades, he showcases how this propaganda instructs that this method is the acceptable and effective way to “woo” a woman, not creep her the fuck out and negatively affect her life (e.g. causing her to lose her job).

That Lucy, at a certain moment while in the car, is cut away from and then cut back to in a reveal of Yvonne, as though there’s nothing strange about this abrupt shift, speaks to her own interchangeability with such a movie-based character (this is also why the inconsistencies extend even to the noticeable amendments in her wardrobe throughout). Someone that Jake can project his desires and fantasies onto without giving much thought to who Lucy really “is.” Despite a handful of similar interests and knowledge of the same books or movies to make reference to (evidenced in a particularly memorable exchange about John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence in which Lucy quotes Pauline Kael’s review as her own), there’s little “sizzle” to their dynamic. Yet that’s the way it is with most relationships, the ones that exist outside of the movies. Everyone else is but another black hole hoping for some of their emptiness to be mildly corked by another human being, no matter who it might be. And in our ceaseless quest to “feel something” or “feel whole”–the way film and TV makes it look so easy to–we can only be disappointed when that never happens. Society’s lens–the proverbial “glass” through which we see everything–“infects our brains. We become it. Like a virus,” as Lucy and Jake conclude–for what would a 2020 movie be without a virus simile?

With the janitor’s existence ever-closer to overlapping with this Jake’s–the one with the lingering hopes and dreams he knows will ultimately come to nothing–he can see that his fate is becoming inevitable. That no “smart, special” girl is going to see himself as he does, in the spring of his youth. That no “big chance” is going to come his way to save him from a life of banality. That’s just not the way “real life” works. 

As the third act builds, Jake finds a pretense to take Lucy to his old high school so he can drop off the “Brrrs” (they’re like Dairy Queen’s Blizzards) from Tulsey Town (a nod to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which also keeps cropping up this year) that he insisted on stopping for even though neither of them wanted one. All the while, Lucy is growing increasingly impatient, wondering why she chose to come on this trip–wishing she had just “ended things” before she got involved with this wormhole-based shitshow. 

As Jake tries to make it better by kissing her in the parked car, he jumps at the purported sight of the janitor watching them. Insisting on leaving Lucy in the vehicle to tell the janitor off, it becomes increasingly clear that the two men are one and the same. The question is: Is Jake’s ultimate self the “pathetic” elderly janitor or the “smart” young man Lucy has been dating? The answer is “both” and “somewhere in between.” And only through the artful wielding of Oklahoma! can the response to that query be illustrated. For yes, only one iteration of these two men can win out. And, as most will attest, it is so often the most mediocre version of oneself that tends to triumph in the end.