I’m Think­ing of End­ing Things

While brows­ing a web­site for a local men­tal health facil­i­ty recent­ly, I was struck by an inter­est­ing sen­tence: ​“It is rare for some­one to think or say ​‘I want to die’. More often, we hear ​‘I wish I wasn’t here any­more’, or ​‘I can’t car­ry on’.” Or per­haps, ​“I’m think­ing of end­ing things.” These euphemisms paper over the big­ger, scari­er sen­ti­ment. Is it tru­ly a desire not to die, or sim­ply a ret­i­cence to voice such an ugly, taboo sentiment?

This brand of phi­los­o­phy is a top­ic on which I con­sid­er myself some­thing of an expert: I’ve con­tem­plat­ed ​“end­ing things” more times than I care to remem­ber. I can shrug it off like the punch­line of a bad joke. More and more it feels like every­thing might be the punch­line of a bad joke.

“I’m think­ing of end­ing things” is what an unnamed young woman (Jessie Buck­ley) con­tem­plates, as she dri­ves to the coun­try­side with her boyfriend Jake (Jesse Ple­mons) to meet his par­ents (David Thewlis and Toni Col­lette) for the first time. Their rela­tion­ship is fair­ly fresh – or is it? She can’t quite recall – but she is rest­less, and doesn’t real­ly see a future with him. Or a present. Or a past. But the thought of final­i­ty, once it arrives, won’t leave her be.

Obses­sion is a run­ning theme in Char­lie Kaufman’s work, from his 1999 debut screen­play for Being John Malkovich right through to 2015’s writ­ten-and-co-direct­ed Anom­al­isa. Though his lat­est film is based on the 2016 nov­el of the same name by Cana­di­an author Iain Reid (and view­ers will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit from famil­iaris­ing them­selves with the source mate­r­i­al) it feels as much a part of his fran­tic, fatal­is­tic worlds as every­thing that pre­ced­ed it.

In one remark­able scene, Buck­ley recites from Pauline Kael’s scathing review of John Cas­savetes’ A Woman Under the Influ­ence as if it’s her own stream of con­scious­ness. The deci­sion to ref­er­ence one of the most famous films about a woman men­tal­ly unrav­el­ling with­in a film osten­si­bly about a woman men­tal­ly unrav­el­ling appears at first a wry Kauf­man­ism, but the more one thinks about it – in light of what pre­cedes the moment and what comes after – the stranger it all becomes.

Plus ça change for Kauf­man, but while Kael took issue with Cas­savetes’ ​“roman­ti­cized con­cep­tion of insan­i­ty”, there’s very lit­tle lovestruck about this glacial take on the splin­ter­ing psy­che, and the gar­ish flo­ral wall­pa­per and dod­der­ing, dement­ing par­ents with an air of qui­et dread about them only add to the sense of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­place­ment. By the time the film reach­es its stun­ning, baf­fling con­clu­sion, it’s impos­si­ble to tell what’s up or down or left or right anymore.

Buck­ley and Plem­mons are pre­dictably com­pelling (both con­tin­u­ing to build fas­ci­nat­ing bod­ies of diverse, chal­leng­ing work), and Thewlis deliv­ers the best line-read­ing of the year while describ­ing the tem­per­a­ture dur­ing his brief appear­ance. For the life of me, I can’t tell you what the hell hap­pened, but I can tell you this: Kaufman’s innate abil­i­ty to trans­late the inner­most feel­ings of psy­chosis and anx­i­ety onto the screen is unparalleled.

His work is often described as sur­re­al, or unusu­al, but for those who have expe­ri­enced the dis­so­cia­tive agony of ​“think­ing of end­ing things” this lat­est jour­ney toward the void cap­tures a frac­tur­ing feel­ing many have tried and failed to put across. When it comes to some­thing as inher­ent­ly unfath­omable as end­ing one’s life, it doesn’t mat­ter that we don’t have all the answers – it’s enough to know some­one else is pay­ing attention.