I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020) Movie • Page 6

I laughed so hard at the directed by Robert Zemekis part. So unexpected

 

I didn’t read the book, so it didn’t fully tip me off. I knew something fucked and unreliable was happening, but it was just another “hmmm” moment for me.

 

Charlie Kaufman Explains I’m Thinking of Ending Things | IndieWire

If you’re interested, Kaufman spells everything out in this interview.

 

The janitor isn’t mentioned at all until very late in the book. In the first scene of the film, the janitor is looking down and Lucy and then it cuts away and cuts back to Jake looking down.

 

ah. Well, yeah. That’s different. I thought you meant the childhood picture

 

I told my mom to watch this, and she has a firestick where she can just talk into the remote to find what she wants, so she says the title and Alexa played her an anti-suicide message and urged her to call the hotline. I wonder how many times that has happened today

 

is the Woman Under the Influence speech from something else? Is she quoting another text?

 

As sucky as it is to admit it, ultimately I’m disappointed in this. I adore Kaufman and think he’s a genius but this one missed the mark. There’s a lot of great aspects to this but as a whole, it just didn’t work for me.

 

I’m not done yet, but I almost feel that you need to read the book to “get” this. I can’t imagine watching this cold

 

I had a vague sense of what happened when it was over but did some reading and I was mostly right. What’s frustrating is that plot is rarely ever a big deal to me, I’m more interested in a visceral reaction. And his stuff usually hits me like a freight train but while there were moments and ideas that worked for me, it led “nowhere” for me.

 

But, like I mentioned before, I kinda felt the same way about Holy Motors after my first viewing but it ended up creeping into my brain over time and now I’d say it’s brilliant, so who knows?

 

It’s verbatim from a Pauline Kael review od it. He has a book of it in his childhood room, but it’s not from that book.

 

Gotcha, that’s what I thought.

Was it a recording of Kael? I’m almost positive the voice changed

 

I had the same thoughts, both that it was verbatim of something else and not her voice anymore. Or at least that the actress purposefully changed her voice for it.

 

There is also a quick shot where the actress changes entirely, lol

 

Lol true, kind of a dead giveaway haha

 

those explanations make a lot of sense, but the more I read on it the more I just really dislike the whole twist of this movie lol. it sounds pretty clumsy in the book too, but I kinda just think it's weak for a Kaufman film. the fact that the only perspective we can even sympathise with by the end is a janitor who we barely know - one of the only things we do know being that he's super creepy towards women - just completely disengages me from this film, there's no reason to care about this character or understand why he would invent such ridiculously verbose and literate characters

it's also wild (and very Kaufman) that the last scene of the film is just, I guess, a jab another movie via a musical? maybe knowing Oklahoma helps but that entire sequence was just actively cringeworthy to me

the worst part is that because of the lack of engagement with the janitor, the twist actively takes away from the rest of the movie instead of adding to it. it means everything we saw is more or less pointless and I kinda feel cheated having engaged so heavily with it, especially the stuff on the farmhouse, cos none of it mattered at all lol
from a big Kauf fan this was kind of just an exhausting dead end that I got very little out of honestly

 

Wow. Just finished. Loved it. Thoughts in a minute

 

I mean it’s been a little while since I read the book, so maybe I’m just remembering this wrong. But the janitor isn’t just some random dude IIRC, the janitor is Jake. And all of the people in the story are real too, maybe with the exception of Lucy. We are spending time with the janitor throughout the whole story, because the story itself is a fabrication in his head. One last visit to old faces and the desire for a different life before he kills himself.
again though it’s been a minute so I might be misremembering things

 

Watched Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, and this for the first time all in the row. Here's my review: nothing is real.

 

why is all the text in this movie adult-swim-in-the-middle-of-the-night small?

 

I haven’t watched the movie yet but lmao at this reference. I’ll make sure my girlfriend grabs her glasses before we start it in a little bit

 

This is going to contain spoilers for the book/film throughout. If you don't plan on reading it but have seen the movie, feel free to read as it's just me digging deeper. I've also had a few beers so I could be rambling and will fix this tomorrow.

The acting in the film (the two leads, the parents, the girl at the DQ or whatever, the janitor, even though this is spoiled in the trailer!!!) and the sound design (how the sound cuts out and muffles or grows louder and sounds almost blown out at certain times (specifically when the father speaks) and editing (as previously mentioned, the cut in of direct quotes...possibly even audio quotes...of speeches, as well as the cuts of the parents aging and the rapid costume changes and the single scene of the main character's actress changing in the car) and every technical aspect is basically flawless.

I really don't know how I'd feel about this film if I hadn't read the book. I know I did not like the book as much having not seen the film yet. They compliment each other in a way that I haven't really seen a book/film adaptation do. There are parts left out in the film that really add to the essential elements of the story like the entire brother storyline, many aspects of The Caller, the framing device of the conversation after the events of the film, the clear(er) resolution that the Janitor and the narrator are actually both Jake about to take his own life. At the same time, there are aspects of the film that generate more emotional weight for me than I ever felt during the book: The aging of the parents, specifically, signifies Jake looking back on the quirks and flaws of his own parents and himself throughout their lives. The awkwardness of the parents during the initial introduction and dinner conversation signifies all of the insecurities that a young Jake would have felt bringing a girl home to his parents. It reminds me of how insecure or awkward I was bringing someone home for the first time. The quirks that you look over or deal with or roll your eyes at while you are home with your parents magnify themselves tenfold the first time an outsider is brought in. The exaggeration of quirks present in that scene is how a young man would most likely view the first interaction between a new significant other and his parents. The book does a great job of framing the entire scene from the perspective of the Young Woman, not letting her get as exaggerated or comfortable in front of the parents as the film does, thus signifying how Jake would thing this girl at a bar would realistically react to meeting his weird parents for the first time. I really like the way that the film does slip between the two protagonists, with one of them becoming more submissive while the other becomes aggressive, allowing the audience to never really become comfortable enough to trust either one.

As the scene in the home progresses, we see the parents age. What was once insecurities or oddities in the mind of the young man quickly becomes physical and mental defects that hinder most in old age. We can assume that the elder Jake cared for and nursed his parents until their death bed. The obnoxious giggling or aggressive eye contact leads way to slowing down, forgetting words, the loss of appetite, eventually death (played in a pretty comical scene, the exaggeration on the face of Collette and the way that Plemmons plays it off, "Out Like a Light", was great for such a dark scene.

Overall, it's hard to say which I enjoyed better. Having the novel fresh in my mind while watching really helped. I'd say the novel was more explicit in spelling out the "twist", allowing me to reflect upon the entire story a lot more after reading, while the movie was more effective emotionally, allowing me to really connect with what was taking place. I enjoyed the pacing of the film more, although the suspense during the climax in the school was certainly less stressful than it was in the book. The book basically makes it into a slasher for a period of time. As I said earlier in the thread, I found some elements of the book to border on cliche "horror" writing that you'd find on Reddit; however, I did miss some of the more explicit horror influences in the film. The tension was there, just displayed in a different way. I think The Caller could have been explored in a better way, but I did enjoy it adding a layer to the Young Woman's name changing repeatedly throughout the film. It echoes Jake calling her "Steph" in the car outside of the school

Anyway, I really liked this. I don't know how you will do having not read the book, but I'd put it behind Synecdoche and before Anomalisa, although I love all three. Synecdoche remains his opus, IMO, a film that will probably never be rivaled. Anomalisa was more inventive, but I did not connect with it on the level I connected with this. I do need to go back to it, though.

I think that you're missing a huge part of the story: the characters are all real. They do matter. The parents are really Jake's parents, they (at least in my interpretation) are much more exaggerated during the dinner scene, but the rest of their interactions are memories that Jake has of them as they age.
The Young Woman is a girl that he did meet at a bar and was attracted to; however, due to his anxiety, he never followed through on slipping her his number. The first 2/3 of the film is his imagination taking him through the first interaction he might have had with her and his parents, had he actually followed through. The book does a better job at flushing out the first few weeks of their relationship. The entire thing is a hypothetical: "What would my life have been like if I was confident enough to ask this girl out. Instead, I am alone." He wasn't "super creepy" towards her, he wasn't anything towards her. The speech she gives at the end of the film is his interpretation to how she'd really feel about him had he given her the note. It's him contradicting everything else we've just watched. Instead of this cool girl going with him to meet his weird parents, she'd probably write him off as a creep...or so he thinks as he drifts off to death.


The makeup is meant to symbolize how fake that entire scene is. He's a sheltered, insecure dude. There is no way in hell that he'd ever get up on stage and sing a song in front of anyone. Yet, every day as he works in the school he visualizes a life in which he is one of those kids putting on the production. The irony is, even in his last fantasy, he can't muster up enough enthusiasm to make the crowd look real.

Really like your interpretation. I did not know that the final speech was lifted from A Beautiful Mind, that makes a lot more sense

Yeah, this is right.

 

Also,

I'm Thinking You Should Leave

 

Book Spoiler:

Movie spoiler:
I am so bummed that they changed this!