Movie Review: I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020)

A surreal drama, I'm Thinking Of Ending Things explores relationship pitfalls through a warped lens.

A young woman (Jessie Buckley) and her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) have been together for about seven weeks, and are now on a long drive in snowy weather to his parents' farmhouse. Although the young woman finds Jake interesting and smart, she has doubts about the relationship and is thinking of ending it. Tonight she will meet his parents for the first time over dinner. The snowstorm is expected to worsen, and the young woman is eager to return home afterwards to prepare for a busy week.

At the farmhouse, Jake's parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) exhibit strange behaviour, including showing up late to greet their guest. Then the young woman experiences bizarre shifts in time, the parents appearing at various stages of aging. In parallel scenes, an elderly night janitor mops the floors at a high school, while students rehearse dances from the musical Oklahoma!

An adaptation of the Iain Reid book written for the screen and directed by Charlie Kaufman, I'm Thinking Of Ending Things is an introspective and abstract reflection on expectations across time. In equal doses mesmerizing and maddening, the film meanders through an obtuse labyrinth dreamily detached from reality, enlivened by a pseudo-Gothic style hinting at horror but content with the joy of empty threats.

Kaufman weaves an often claustrophobic pattern unconcerned with familiar narrative rules. Before and after the dinner, plenty of time is invested in the car trips, and other than the incessant snow, the passing scenery is of no consequence. Instead, the young woman and Jake engage in long, often tediously self-conscious intellectual conversations and debates, the cameras zoomed in on the couple within the intimate 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Interrupting the two in-car segments is the dinner with Jake's parents, and here Kaufman reveals, in a nonchalant manner, the hallucinatory elements. A lot more is going on than just a young woman thinking of breaking up with her boyfriend, and most of it is inaccessible. The clues to the arcane psychological puzzle start with a title open to interpretation, and include cryptic fragments scattered inside the house and within the dialogue. Attempts at assembling a rational picture are doomed to frustration by intentionally convoluted perspectives.

Later, a pit-stop at an ice-cream stand prompts a detour to Jake's old high school. The couple's fraught adventure merges with the night janitor's experience, and Kaufman audaciously introduces new sharp and weird turns in both content and presentation. 

Rather remarkably, the 134 minutes of running time pass by quickly, the edge of unease amplified by cautiously agitated performances from Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons. As the parents, Toni Collette and David Thewlis stretch into nervy territory.

Themes of compatibility, loneliness, regret, self-doubt, self-worth, and dominant cultural imprints intermingle. Ambiguously stimulating, I'm Thinking Of Ending Things welcomes free-form interpretation, with all the associated exasperation.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (2008)

A view of the holocaust from the perspective of the young German son of a concentration camp commander, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas is a drama of tragic awakening.

In Berlin during World War Two, Ralf (David Thewlis) is a senior army commander, and receives a promotion to oversee a concentration camp in a secluded rural area. He relocates his family, consisting of wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga), 12 year old daughter Gretel (Amber Beattie) and 8 year old son Bruno (Asa Butterfield), to a large mansion near the camp. The move is tough on Bruno, who has to give up all his friends.

After encountering a Jewish former doctor now forced into slave labour, Bruno still has limited understanding of what is going on and believes the camp to be a farm. He eventually ventures out to explore and reaches the camp's outer perimeter, where across the security fence he befriends a prisoner his age named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon). Meanwhile the atrocities at the camp drive a wedge between Elsa and Ralf, while Gretel is indoctrinated in Nazi propaganda and buys into the hateful ideology.

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas explores the lack of awareness and divisions among Germans relative to the holocaust. Director Mark Herman adapted the 2006 book by John Boyne, and follows young Bruno, a naturally curious and playful 8 year old, as he is yanked from his familiar Berlin surroundings and into the docile countryside. There he fights boredom and strings clues together about the "farm" next door, but still has difficulty understanding the magnitude of the horror being perpetuated.

The film runs an efficient 94 minutes, and while little time is created for meaningful character arcs, Herman also avoids dawdling and melodrama. This is a clear-headed, schmaltz free stance, presenting facts within and outside the family as discovered by a child. The flickers of protest start with Bruno's grandma, who disapproves of Nazi ideology and is not afraid to speak her mind. Later an officer reporting to dad Ralf reveals his family secret, and finally mom Elsa reaches the breaking point where Nationalism yields to abhorrence.

Bruno's sister Gretel is young enough to be brainwashed and represents the ease with which a virulent ideology can spread. Books full of hate taught by a scrupulous instructor soon transform her into a loyal young advocate for the regime. Bruno is not immune: Herman offers a stark reminder of the power of propaganda films on immature minds.

Meanwhile Bruno is also exposed to helpful farmers who used to be doctors, chimney stacks belching black smoke at regular intervals, and a young boy like himself but always wearing pyjamas and confined to the other side of the fence. The world is what it is, and Bruno tries to make sense of it the only way a child knows, by exploring, making new play friends, and displaying natural human kindness not yet stifled by hatred.

In keeping with the film's tone, Herman works his way to a grounded resolution. In one of the darkest chapters of human history, one child's story is but a fragile ray of light.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.