Hey guys, Pete here. Today i'm going to talk about the ending
of the movie "i'm thinking of ending things" which just premiered on Netflix.
at first glance this story is about a young woman
going to meet her boyfriend Jake's parents for the very first time.
the relationship is still new. they've only been together for six or maybe
seven weeks, and the title seems to come from her
thinking about ending it. on the way to his family farm we get
hints that this is anything but a simple story. when they
arrive it's clear that things aren't what they
seem or at least they're distorted in some way. by the
time his parents start appearing at different
ages it seems pretty obvious that what the couple is experiencing
isn't real. but if it's not that then what is it? and why does her name
and job and what she's studying keep changing?
and what's up with the shots of a janitor doing his job at a high school?
is his scraping gum off of a chair somehow relevant to their relationship?
before i get into answering those questions i'll say that i think the
ending is somewhat ambiguous. i know how the book of the same name
it's based on ends, and while there are a lot of
similarities with the source material the ending doesn't play out in the same
way on screen. as a warning from this point on there will be
spoilers about the ending of Charlie Kaufman's "i'm thinking of
ending things". if you haven't seen the film this video won't be for you
and this is your chance to leave. the title of the movie says it all.
the story is about thinking of ending things. it's introduced to us in a way
that makes us think it's about the relationship, there is another way to
interpret this saying though which is i'm thinking of committing
suicide, and that's actually how the book ends.
most of what we see in this movie doesn't actually take place.
not in the real world anyway. it happens inside the head of the janitor at the
high school. he's the real Jake, and the younger
version who takes his new girlfriend to meet his parents
is how he thinks of or remembers himself. this might not seem clear the first time
you watch the movie but if you go back to look
there will be several clues you can't miss. for example we see the janitor in
the farmhouse before we know what it looks like, and we see his thermos and
slippers both there and at the school. of course the
big one that jumps out is his work uniforms in the washing
machine after he was so concerned about her not going
down there. i'm thinking of ending things as the
story about existence, the subjective nature of how we form our
identity, and the way we interpret the memories
inside our own head. the presentation is confusing and
disorienting and the movie is less concerned
delivering a coherent definitive ending than the book was.
if you came into it cold there's no shame in feeling unsure of what you just
saw happen. probably the biggest hurdle to
piecing things together is that the narration is in the young woman's voice.
that is how Jessie Buckley's character is credited,
and the fact that her name is constantly changing along with everything
else about her leads us to understand that what we're seeing
is a product of Jake the janitor's imagination.
most of the conversations are of the imagined variety,
but there still are some truths buried in the thoughts that bounce around
in between the characters. one of those is delivered in the school when the
young woman, who i'll refer to as Lucy from here on
out, talks to the janitor. she tells him, "we
never even talked is the truth. i'm not even
sure i registered him. there were a lot of people." as she continues to describe
the encounter we realize that this is really what happened at the trivia night
from the story Lucy told over dinner. Jake didn't slip her his number like she
told his parents. instead he creeped her out by staring at
her and they never spoke to each other. this explains the inconsistencies with
her name, with what she's wearing, with what she does for a living, and the
shifts in the way they relate to each other.
Lucy's voice is what we hear in the narration but it comes from Jake's mind
where he's trying out different things. he tries to imagine a version of the
girl he saw that night in the bar and what might have happened if they
became a couple. how they would talk about their interests, how they might
have made a relationship work, how she might have won over his
family before they died, and his underlying insecurity that
she might have just wanted to leave him if she got
to know him anyway. when they look at the picture on the wall
Lucy thinks it looks like her even though Jake says it's him as a child.
they're both right because they are the same person. we get a glimpse of where
his ideas for her come from when she enters his childhood
bedroom. the bookshelf is filled with books
related to the topics they discussed and the different professions that she
had. this is underlined when she picks up Eva H.D.'s
book of poetry Rotten Perfect Mouth which is open to
the poem she recited as her own in the car earlier. if you need more
evidence that this version of Lucy only exists in Jake's mind, there's plenty.
in the car she says, "i feel like i was that wind tonight.
blowing through jake's parents. seeing them as they were,
seeing them as they will be, seeing them after they're gone when only i'm left."
as they age, de-age, and age again we begin to understand that Jake never left
home. instead he watched them decline into
their old age, and remembers it as he's now growing old
himself. at this point in the story they're gone
and he lives on in the house alone. so if jake and lucy never met then why
is he thinking about what things might have been like if they were a couple?
there are several examples during their conversations where jake slips in
anecdotes from his real life. these mostly relate to the students and
how he sees them, but there's an exchange just before
they arrive at Tulsi Town where we get an
insight into his headspace and the hopelessness that resides there.
"like feeling old. like your body is going. you're hearing, your sight,
you can't see and you're invisible and you've made so many wrong turns," he says.
"the lie of it all. that it's going to get better. that it's never too late.
that god has a plan for you. that age is just a number.
that it's always darkest before the dawn. that every cloud has a fucking silver
lining. that there's someone for everyone." we get
the idea that Jake has been trying to construct a way that his life
could have turned out better inside his head for some time.
he can't find a way to make it work as even his made-up
idealized version of his girlfriend is planning to end their relationship.
there's also the repeated phone calls she receives throughout the evening.
the name of the caller changes to whatever name she's being referred to at
that point in the story. when she listens to the voicemail we
hear a man's voice say that there's "only one question to resolve/" on the
screen it's never made clear what that question is
but in the book we find out it's "what are you waiting for?"
these are Jake the janitor's intrusive thoughts of ending things
creeping into his imaginary road trip with his girlfriend.
and yes, when you think about it that way it is rather dark.
an aging man unsatisfied with the way things turned out contemplating suicide.
but to his credit Charlie Kaufman does present this in a less dark way than the
book does. the janitor is confronted with the
reality of what the young woman he saw at the trivia night remembered about him.
"he was a creeper you know? i can't remember what he looks like. why
would i? nothing happened. just one of thousands
of such non-interactions in my life. it's like
asking me to describe a mosquito that bit me 40 years ago."
after that she's reunited with the younger version of jake
and we watch as two dancers dressed in their same clothes step
in to take their place. in dance we watch as the delusion of what might have been
plays out. they meet, fall in love, and even get married before
a dancing janitor enters the picture to try to take the
girlfriend away. there's a fight that ends when the janitor stabs and kills
the dancer who represents the younger jake
taking the girlfriend for himself. this symbolizes the end of the idea that Jake
can dream up a way where his life turns out to be something better.
he finishes up his shift and walks outside to his car in the middle of a
blizzard. it's not clear how it happens. suicide or
freezing to death, or suicide by freezing to death, but we have to imagine he dies
after he gets there. his walk down the hall naked with the
cartoon pig feels like a confirmation that he's no
longer with us. after that we see not the janitor, but an
aged up version of jesse plemons playing an older jake.
in his theater makeup he receives an award with aged up versions of lucy and
his parents in the crowd watching. from the podium he tells Lucy, "you are
the reason i am. you are all my reasons." which is a
line you might recognize from the movie "A Beautiful Mind" the dvd
of which we saw in his childhood bedroom sitting on top
of the books on the bookshelf. so this seems like another example of
his fantasy crafting. from there we depart from the ending of
the book and lean way harder into the play Oklahoma! we see a version
of his room converted into a shack in the style of the play.
he sings a song called "lonely room" which is about the bad guy in the story
getting the girl he wants. to be honest i'm not very familiar
with the play as i've never seen it, but it appears that at one point the hero
visits the same villain and suggests that he kill himself.
that seems pretty interesting to me as someone who has no idea about the play
other than you know it's a famous play that's been around for quite some time.
i wouldn't have expected that to be there. in the book's ending none of the
oklahoma stuff is included. the janitor just kills himself
and the book turns out to be based on journals he wrote about his imaginary
life with Lucy that were found next to his body.
i guess dream ballet and a musical number are slightly more palatable but
in the end it's still pretty tragic. as a person who admittedly spends too
much time in my own head i view it as a cautionary tale and not completely a
downer. i also like the angle of how we create
this image of ourselves based on how we interact with the things that we like
and how we then project that onto others. this is a particularly bleak
circumstance, Jake the janitor's life and its ending,
but the existential questions it asks are still
quite relatable. it strikes me as the kind of movie people
either love or hate - i don't see a lot of people being indifferent about it.
i think in the end it's not as much a puzzle to be
solved but rather a story that reveals itself to have more layers to unearth
once you understand what happened. i thought the performances were great
across the board but Jessie Buckley does stand
out as she changes so much between each scene.
the subtle costume changes really stand out when you watch it again,
and the aspect ratio works to add to the tension once you get used to it.
i really enjoyed it and with that i'll bring this video to an
end. let me know in the comments what you thought about the movie and any other
questions you might have about the ending. please like this video if you
enjoyed it and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already.
thanks for watching, i'll talk to you soon.