The films of Charlie Kaufman are a little heady, and you don't need a film degree to
know that.
Being John Malkovich, the first major motion picture made from one of Kaufman's scripts,
follows a struggling puppeteer who finds a portal into actor John Malkovich's head.
Adaptation, meanwhile, is Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of the book The Orchid Thief, which
follows a protagonist named Charlie Kaufman struggling to write a screenplay adaptation
of the book The Orchid Thief.
"I'm reacting the way the world does to movies about making movies about making movies.
I mean come on, Charlie Kaufman.
Some of us have work in the morning, damn."
Charlie Kaufman's movies and scripts can often portray existence as something out of a dream
but not necessarily one of the good dreams.
The characters' neuroses manifest outside of their minds, and the results are usually
the last thing you'd expect.
Do you really need to know any of this before you watch the latest movie that Kaufman has
written and directed?
Maybe, maybe not, but it probably couldn't hurt.
So let's dive into his latest metaphysical thriller, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, before
it hits Netflix on September 4.
"I'm thinking of ending things."
"Huh?"
"What?"
"Did you say something?"
"I don't think so."
"Weird."
The concept of "meeting the parents" is familiar to anyone who's ever been in a relationship.
On the surface, I'm Thinking of Ending Things has a pretty standard premise: A woman travels
to meet her boyfriend Jake's parents for the first time.
But where, say, Meet the Parents was a goofy comedy featuring Robert DeNiro asking if Ben
Stiller could milk him, Kaufman's film takes a decidedly darker approach.
Based on the 2016 book of the same name by Canadian writer Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of
Ending Things is a surreal dive into the woman's relationship with her boyfriend, not to mention
her relationship with herself.
Both dreamlike and unsettling, the film offers visions from the past and future, internal
monologues that don't quite stay internal, and a very wet, very shaky dog.
"Oh, he's all wet"
In 2019, actor Jesse Plemons, who plays Jake, revealed in a GQ interview that Kaufman's
adaptation of Reid's book kept, quote, "maybe 15 percent of the dialogue."
That ought to be your first clue that, like Adaptation before it, I'm Thinking of Ending
Things will make something wholly original and unique from the book it's based on.
There aren't a lot of characters to keep track of in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, with
only four actors filling out the main cast.
The two leads are Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley, who play Jake and his girlfriend,
respectively.
If you've watched much television or movies over the last few years, you've surely seen
them before.
You might know Jesse Plemons from his long-running role as Landry Clarke on the show Friday Night
Lights.
Since then, he's made regular appearances in prestige TV series, taking on the villainous
Todd in Breaking Bad's final season, and the hapless husband Ed the butcher in Fargo's
second season, the latter of which earned him an Emmy nomination.
He reprised his role of Todd in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and appeared as Chuckie
O'Brien in Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama The Irishman.
And of course, his portrayal of weird, lonely cop Gary in Game Night is legendary.
"I will admit I have eagerly awaited a visit such as this."
Jessie Buckley, meanwhile, has a no less impressive resume under her belt.
The Irish actress started her career appearing in UK-based television series and movies,
earning lead roles as Moll in Beast and and Rose-Lynn in Wild Rose.
She's since been cast in some massively high profile projects.
In 2019, she appeared in Judy alongside Renee Zellweger.
That same year, she took on one of the more tragic roles in Chernobyl, playing a pregnant
woman who puts herself and her unborn baby at risk to stay with her firefighter husband
as he dies from radiation poisoning.
She's also slated to appear in the as-yet unreleased fourth season of Fargo.
In 2020, she landed on The Irish Times' list of the 50 greatest Irish film actors of all
time.
Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley share the screen with two legendary actors: David Thewlis
and Toni Collette, names you surely know and faces you've definitely seen.
David Thewlis, who plays Jake's dad in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, may be most recognizable
to a certain generation as Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter franchise.
But he's been making things weird in films for decades.
Some of his standout roles include the lead in 1993's Naked, as well as an extremely brief
but thoroughly memorable appearance in The Big Lebowski as Knox Harrington.
In 2017, he branched further out into franchise territory, appearing in a major role in the
superhero hit Wonder Woman.
But it's in 2015 that Thewlis first worked with Charlie Kaufman, giving voice to the
protagonist of Anomalisa, a stop-motion film that was nominated for a Best Animated Film
Oscar.
He's also the third member of the cast to have appeared in a season of the Fargo TV
series, playing the dastardly V.M.
Varga in season 3.
Jake's other parent is played by Toni Collette, who like Thewlis has been a cinematic chameleon,
elevating any film she appears in by virtue of her performance.
She first broke through in 1994, playing the lead in Muriel's Wedding, and in 1999 was
mom to a kid who just would not stop seeing dead people in The Sixth Sense, which earned
her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
From there, Colette landed roles in The Hours and Little Miss Sunshine, which led to starring
in her own TV series, The United States of Tara.
One of Colette's most recent high profile parts came in 2018, in Ari Aster's horror
hit Hereditary.
And with memorable appearances in 2019's Velvet Buzzsaw and Oscar-nominated Knives Out, Colette
is a force to be reckoned with.
"Jake has told me so much about you."
"He's told me so much about both of you, too."
"And you came anyway?"
In one way or another, many of Charlie Kaufman's movies are his attempts to untangle the knots
within the human mind.
Whether that mind happens to be his or not is largely open to interpretation.
Take Kaufman's directorial debut, 2008's Synecdoche, New York.
The film, which he also wrote, follows the trials and tribulations of regional theater
director Caden Cotard.
He spends his mundane existence obsessing over death and struggling to live up to his
creative potential.
His ailments, obsessions, and achievements grow more surreal and abstract with each passing
minute of film.
Eventually he spends decades staging the most ambitiously mundane theater production the
world has ever seen in a massive Manhattan warehouse.
"What?"
"When are we gonna get an audience in here.
It's been 17 years."
Is Caden's relentless pursuit of artistic truth his life's work?
Is it a monumental and magnificent waste of time?
It's bleak, hilarious, profound, and possibly pointless.
Kaufman's films explore the anxieties that come with living and creating.
Like his other works, I'm Thinking of Ending Things will dive into the dark parts of your
brain and leave you wondering where reality begins and ends all in the best possible way.
"I tell you, I would misplace my own head if it wasn't screwed onto my own head."
Thanks for watching.
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