Netflix Original
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is the new film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, the written of films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation. It stars Jessie Buckley as the main character and Jesse Plemons as her boyfriend as they drive to meet his parents for the first time.
Now I come to this from the perspective of never having seen any of Charlie Kaufman’s work before. I’m aware he is a figure who inspires great love amongst his fans, but also dislike from many others. I will certainly check out his other work at some point, regardless of my feelings on this film.
With regards to I’m Thinking of Ending Things, there is a lot to like, Jessie Buckley is excellent, I’ve said before I think she’s one of my favourite actors and she is amazing in everything she’s in. Jesse Plemons is also great as are Toni Collette and David Thewlis as his parents. By far my favourite segment of the film is the dinner table conversation between the parents and the couple and the whole section which involves not knowing how old the parents are or what in the house is real. In that section I was really engaged and really enjoying the film. There is also some great cinematography, particularly early on.
However, that’s as far as my praise goes really. The rest of the film I found to be very dull and self indulgent. This isn’t that I didn’t understand it, although it is hard to follow, I understood my interpretation of the film, it just felt as if it was all building towards something, but in its place was nothing of real substance. I hate over-reliance on voiceover narration in films, which is something used a lot in this film. I always feel like its a lazy way of explaining how the character is feeling and is often overused in films adapted from novels as this film has been. The whole point of making a film is to show how a character is feeling rather than describe it as you do in a book, so to use voiceover to explain everything is just lazy in my opinion.
This film also prompts an interesting debate over how Netflix influences the way filmmakers make a film as often time constraints aren’t as strong with Netflix originals. This means that filmmakers can make a film as long as they want without feeling like they need to cut it down so that cinema audiences don’t get restless. This was seen with Scorsese’s The Irishman being so long and much as I enjoyed that film, it could have been cut down. This film is certainly in need of cutting down and could work a lot better as a 90 minute long film rather than being 2 and 1/4 hours long. In my opinion good editing is crucial and is true for both books and film and often the best person to do that is not always the director themselves as they are inclined to keep everything and make the film far too long.
Overall, I didn’t get much out of this, but if you like Kaufman’s work, give it a watch, but if not be warned it is pretty hard to get through. If you feel like giving up watch until they leave the parents house then you’ve seen the best of the film. 2 Stars.
Movie Night 