What are you thinking about? Errrm - vague in-my-head stuff.

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#12 : I'm Thinking Of Ending Things

Charlie Kaufman’s third film as director, and yet another superbly disquieting essay on human frailty and alienation, here with Jessie Buckley as the woman dissatisfied with boyfriend Jesse Plemons

Charlie Kaufman has a somewhat unique take on the world, so I'm expecting to be somewhat bemused by this - but I've no idea as to whether I'm going to enjoy it or hate it.  And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I'll be any clearer on my opinions after I've watched the film either.

And so we start the film with a shot of some wallpaper - which somewhat surprised me because I'm pretty sure my parents had it in their house at some point (this is probably coincidental though).  So we start the film with a young couple taking a road trip to go and see his parents and they are having somewhat awkward verbose conversations on various subjects whilst, at the same time, she is having an internal conversation with herself - so that doesn't get confusing at all.  The trip is also interspersed with cut scenes of an old school janitor going about his job - the easy option would that this is his dad, but I somehow doubt we'll have gone for the easy option here.  Also, we know that Jesse Plemons' character is called Jake and we hear Jessie Buckley's character called Lucy - but she's credited as "Young Girl", so obviously things aren't quite that straightforward.

However, once they get to his parents, it's fair to say things get a little bit stranger.  They start slowly, with mere awkwardness on everyone's part but then little clues are dropped that we're not really in a particularly normal situation here - for starters, Jessie's character changes name several times throughout the course of their visit.  I'm not going to say any more because it's quite fun to watch and go "huh" but it's safe to say things get very, very confusing indeed.  And then she goes down into the basement - and we all know that's never a good idea in a film.

But then it's time to go, so we're back in the car and everything's back to normal - or normal levels of strangeness anyway.  I'm not entirely sure I needed thirty minutes of awkward conversation set in a car in a snowstorm at night, but that's what I got anyway - until we find ourselves at the school which the janitor we saw earlier works at.  So it's all going to come together nicely and make sense now, right?  Well - I suspect Charlie thought he was helping to explain things but I'm not sure a contemporary dance routine, a naked man following an animated pig through the school and a man accepting a Nobel Prize whilst singing a song from Oklahoma in his childhood bedroom entirely make things clear (don't worry - these spoilers will not make any difference if you haven't seen the film yet because I could explain the entire scene in minute detail and it still wouldn't ruin anything for you).  And then that's the end of the film.

The whole film is very beautifully shot, although some shots are somewhat off-putting - which is obviously to be expected.  Additionally the writing is very dense - and again that's just what you get from Mr Kaufman, so you have to take it as it comes.  I did think 2:15 was too long though - the car shots in particular could be drastically reduced without overly affecting anything.

Jessie Buckley is great - she conveys the required confusion and uncertainty well (and the internet suggests that was generally due to the confusion and uncertainty she was experiencing around the film - her quote when asked to explain it was "it feels like...something").  Jesse Plemons has less to do but I can't find fault with what he does - and Toni Collette and David Thewlis have themselves a ball playing his parents.  There are other characters involved, but it's fair to say they are not substantial roles - the bulk of the film relies on Jessie and Jesse and they acquit themselves well.

Overall, it's the sort of film that some people love but most people hate - I enjoy them when I'm in the mood for them and luckily was so today.  I particularly liked the scenes at his parents house where you know things are not quite right but you're not sure exactly how - although I think because I knew Charlie Kaufman was involved I probably made less attempts to understand it than I might otherwise have done.  However, I did make some guesses towards the end of the film as to what was I thought might be going on and some research afterwards on the internet suggests I wasn't a million miles off - which I'd have to say surprised me! 

I don't think I can really recommend this to anyone - it's entirely up to you to decide if you like this sort of thing or it drives you mad.  I haven't seen either of the other two films he's directed to compare them with but of his screen-writing credits I'd say this is closest to Adaptation or Being John Malkovich.  David Lynch is also another similar reference point.  And this is the third Netflix film in this list in a row - so if you want to watch it, that's where you'll find it.

#13 - A lot of similarities with the previous film
#11 - A film I didn't enjoy watching - but in a good way!