#MOVIE IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS MOVIE#

#MOVIE IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS MOVIE#

“This movie is dealing with somebody’s experience of absorbing things that they see and how they become part of his psyche,” he recently told IndieWire. While Kaufman has been reluctant to give his audience such a clearcut revelation, he has explained that his version of Jake is a man trapped in his own fantasies, ones informed by his consumption of popular art and media. In Reid’s novel, readers learn that the janitor is actually Jake, lonely in old age, and Lucy - the whole trip to the farmhouse, in fact - is simply a product of his imagination. “We’re able to release some of that tension, and then it builds back up to the actual conclusion of the film.” “It’s this weird thing where actually does the opposite of what you feel it should,” he says. Walker says that while the ballet feels like a jarring transition away from the suspenseful narrative Kaufman was seemingly building (“It could’ve turned into a slasher film where she gets murdered in the high school,” he posits), he believe it’s a necessary diversion from the tension of this mysterious story. Lucy and Jake, before the strange trip to Jake’s high school, in the living room of his family’s farmhouse.

Jake then appears outside a nearby classroom, with Wadley’s score teasing its way to the fore, as two doppelgänger extensions of Jake and Lucy (Broadway dancer Ryan Steele and NYCB soloist Unity Phelan) enter behind Plemons and Buckley, respectively. Here, the two share a touching moment and, out of nowhere, a tearful hug good-bye. When Jake, somehow slapped with a vision of the institution’s elderly janitor spying on them from afar, rushes inside to give him a piece of his mind, Lucy begrudgingly follows suit, only to meet the janitor herself while wandering its empty hallways. But let’s set the stage anyway, keeping in mind that the identities and visages of those involved seem eerily, constantly in flux: After Lucy (played by Jessie Buckley, who’s listed merely as “Young Woman” in the credits) endures a frighteningly surreal trip to her boyfriend Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) farmhouse to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), their long, wintry drive home inexplicably brings them to Jake’s high school.

Suffice it to say, the early events of this movie are never what they seem. Any viewer would be forgiven for wondering exactly what they just watched by the end of its over two-hour runtime, but to hear behind-the-scenes creatives like Walker, production designer Molly Hughes, and composer Jay Wadley tell it, a lot of the answers can be found within the final fantasy ballet sequence itself. The New York City Ballet soloist is talking about the closing arc of I’m Thinking of Ending Things - but really, he could be talking about most moments of Charlie Kaufman’s head-scratching Netflix feature, adapted from Iain Reid’s 2016 novel of the same name. “It takes you a second to accept what’s happening.” “It’s very off-putting,” says choreographer Peter Walker. The movie’s choreographer, production designer, and composer insist that the ballet at the end of Charlie Kaufman’s Netflix feature is the key.

Movie im thinking of ending things