If you’re looking for something with clear emotional peaks and valleys, keep looking. You’ll be confused, and that may be your primary emotion, but you will go through a lot more, too. There aren’t jump scares or intense gore, but the film is insidious. Of course, this doesn’t mean the film is easy to deal with psychologically. The trailer uses the confusion and uncertainty of the film to present it as scary, when in reality the confusion in the film is the means and the end. To those unfamiliar with Charlie Kaufman’s work or what the film is about, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw. The trailer for “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” looks like it could be for a horror film. It can be an overload of information and emotions being thrown at you in a way that is intentionally chaotic. This film examines the past, the present and the future it examines failures and successes, and what could have been and it does this in an often-overwhelming way. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, like “Synecdoche” and Kaufman’s other works, is also very existential. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is arguably more plot-based than “Synecdoche,” with a more concrete ending, but it still can leave a viewer unsatisfied or lost if they are expecting a clean and easy resolution, as it doesn’t explain itself at all. There won’t be a moment that lifts the confusion until the film ends and you look everything up - this was the case for me, at least, and I know this has been a somewhat common experience for other viewers. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is similarly confounding. It is also intentionally very emotionally impactful by the end of the film, you might feel bogged down, angry, or like you’ve had a cathartic release. Every time you think it can’t get more confusing, frustrating, and unnerving, you’re proven wrong. It starts out fairly normal, but once it starts to get weird it spins out pretty quickly.
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In the simplest terms, “Synecdoche” is about a theater director who tries to create a play about his life.
#Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind ending movie#
Don’t worry, I won’t spoil Roger Ebert’s favorite movie for you. I bring “Synecdoche” up because “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” shares many similarities with it (fun fact: synecdoche is a literary term that refers to using a part of something to represent the whole, so I just used synecdoche in referring to the film as just “Synecdoche”). It’s still hard for critics and audiences to find common ground on the film, though with the release of the acclaimed “Anomalisa” and a broader examination of Kaufman’s work, it has aged better. Others heavily criticized the film, which flopped at the box office. “Synecdoche, New York” was divisive when it first came out, with Roger Ebert praising it in his initial review and later claiming it as the best movie of the decade. “Being John Malkovich” starts off being about a man who finds a way into actor John Malkovich’s brain, and the film’s plot only gets more bizarre from there. In general, Charlie Kaufman’s films are characterized by either an odd premise, a steep decline in lucidity, or both.
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The cast is rounded out with Toni Collette and David Thewlis as his parents. Her boyfriend is played by character actor Jesse Plemons, who you may know from the movies “Vice” and “Game Night”. She seems to be having doubts about the future of their relationship. The premise of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” is that a young woman (Jessie Buckley) is going to meet her boyfriend’s parents. In recent years, Kaufman has begun directing his written works, with “Synecdoche, New York”, “Anomalisa”, and now, of course, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”.
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He is best known for writing the screenplays for “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” both directed by Spike Jonze and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, which was directed by Michel Gondry and is arguably Kaufman’s most widely known film. If you do, you probably have strong feelings about him, or at least a lot of thoughts.