I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

User Review

• 

  BarneyNuttall

  9 / 10

  Much like Wind River or True Grit (the remake), I'm Thinking Of Ending Things is a 4D experience where you can feel the bitter wind that surrounds our characters. These winds are both natural and ethereal; the latter being the winds of time which blow around us while we stand stationary.
  
  With Lynchian surrealism and wonderfully jarring lead performances from Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley, Kaufman's sickening visions of love, relationships and time are realised to create a artistic tour de force of cinema, dance and theatre.
  
  Closest to Tarkovsky and a distant cousin to Kubrick, the film is poignant and rhythmic with dialogue which hits each melancholic note on time. Buckley begins the piece with an Ellen Paige mellowness which increasingly grows in anxiety. Yet, we cannot trust her for not all is told. Why is she ignoring her friends calls? How come she can break the fourth wall? Meanwhile Plemons brings his familiar Of Mice and Men Lenny performance and brings it down to a simmer, emphasising a duality between not only his character in the past and present but himself as an actor too.
  
  In fact, the two leads are so convincing and straight faced that, for me, the supporting roles from Toni Collette and David Thewlis seem obvious and fairly black and white, compared to the obscurity of our protagonists.
  
  Charlie Kaufman is a deeply thoughtful man who brilliantly casts his world onto the screen. Stretching the boundaries of cinema, he is a modern master of the screen and the script.

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