Continuing our new series of film reviews where Roudi reviews films in under 451 words, we bring you her thoughts on Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a subtle, brutal, almost entirely monotonous inner logorrhea stricken monologue that takes the characters—and in result, us—to a never ending battle between the inertia and stickiness of people to places while time passes through them. 

Nothing good can come out of old farmhouses, abandoned swings in the snow, dark basements, the thoughts of ending a relationship while the words cannot come out, fluorescent lights and long hallways. But a dance number while the delicate sound of harp soothes our emotional wounds of the long stormy road trip reminded me of the warm and fuzzy sequences that Kaufman masterfully brings to life in the harshest of his works.

In its least sentimental form, ‘nostalgia’ is the key to feel at home inside the belly of this surreal, melancholically dense work. Accepting that being nostalgic means welcoming the pain of reliving a particular memory or merely remembering a mood—these sound like simple concepts. But the cinematic version of it, made by Kaufman, is mental and emotional heavy lifting at least for some minutes. It might feel exhausting if we stubbornly insist on deciphering the clues and making some meaning of the potential hints. 

I made the mistake of rewinding one moment early on in the movie, over and over again. Of course, I had noticed the point the very first time, but Kaufman forces the audience to doubt themselves. Between the confusion that we experience at a movie theater—without having access to the original sin of rewinding—and having the evil remote control in the privacy of our homes, an essential part of movie watching experience vanishes, and that is a shame. Impatiently thinking of the act of rewinding and rewatching to make sure we have not missed any points highlights Kaufman’s filmmaking shenanigans. 

For the neurotic audience—like myself—the voice of a character’s soliloquy can be overwhelming but intriguing. Between this and the many visual details in the movie—like Pauline Kael’s book in a messy stash that screams, “I am obsessed with cinema,” we might forget that some tales are not supposed to be understood fully. The movie’s structure is a road trip, which begins when it is still sunny, but unusually lightweight snowflakes playfully start to fall from the sky and quietly hint what the heart of the movie is: a fairytale. But fairytales about the human condition do not have the typical ‘once upon a time’ and the ‘the end’ that wraps the story to let us take a deep satisfying breath. 

Enjoy every second of that beautifully lit and shot ice cream parlor scene. An order of Oreo Brr soothes the pain of nostalgia.