In Kaufman's latest, nothing is as it seems

In terms of appreciation, in the context of spoiler-filled explainers and fan theories, a Charlie Kaufman movie is becoming less about the what-is and more about the what-could-be. I can’t say it’s a bad thing.

Kaufman’s latest – 'I’m Thinking of Ending things', adapted from a novel by Iain Reid, for Netflix – has all the atmosphere and loner spirit of his most accomplished work. “It is beautiful out here, in a bleak, heartbroken kind of way,” says a character. There’s snow, stacked up on long stretches of dreary nothingness. The memories here, fragmented and altered, are also about loss and longing. There’s a new swing set in front of an abandoned house. There’s an impassioned rendition of a poem about loneliness, about the “onslaught of identical days”.

A young woman (Jessie Buckley) sits in a car and wonders why she’s in a relationship (of six, or maybe seven, weeks) that isn’t heading anywhere. The man (Jesse Plemons), driving, appears nervous as if he can hear her thoughts. The mood stays placid but it draws from a hint of intrigue. The drive is intercut with visuals of an old high school caretaker who mops floors and washes dishes; he just passes by, inconsequential and invisible.

The line about the bleak and the beautiful comes from the woman (she’s introduced to us as Lucy but who are we to say?) as she looks out the car window and Jake, her boyfriend (again, we aren’t quite sure), drives on. There’s a bit of a tease going on with the identity of the woman who also gets the voice-over here. So, while we’re being conditioned to a story formed through this woman’s thoughts, she’s shown at different points as having different names and interests – poetry, art, Physics.

In another film, all this could play out like the build-up before the burn; a road-mystery we know would soon go off course. Then, they arrive at Jake’s family farm. There, as his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) physically shift between their younger and older versions, the earlier inconsistencies seem to make sense. This is where you really see the hook. Nothing is what it seems.

The slouchy, old caretaker in those school hallways is no longer the sub-plot you expected to tie this all up. This is his story; we could be in his head, as he puts together possible extensions to a memory – the relationship, the drive through the blizzard, the family supper, the final validation and the speech from 'A Beautiful Mind'. He could be repositioning people and events to fabricate a life he didn’t get to live. This could be the genre-bending rom-com he could headline.

That the woman, and not Jake himself, gets to narrate his thoughts is a ruse in line with the film’s structure. That young Jake doesn’t get to live it up even in this imagined reality also says a bit about how the old man is, probably, going to end things.

Some of the cues left for us in Jake’s room point to the piecing-together of this altered version of things; how Lucy takes a composite form as the “idealised” woman, part memory, parts fantastic. This is a tough watch because it becomes progressively difficult to invest in these stories about people who talk and act like flickering projections; versions as preferred, or remembered, by others. The woman talks about how “fake, crappy movie ideas” live and grow in your brain, “replacing real ideas.” Clearly, it’s tougher when these people throw at you lines like that.

Despite its cragged pacing, its conceit and some exclusively American pop culture references, I cared enough to stay. I did pause and replay and I did look up some of the musical references. Sure, there was effort but what really got me to stay was the bare idea of a man looking back, to reimagine. The idea that the thought could, sometimes, be closer to reality than the action.

Stripped of its smarts and aberrant narrative techniques, I’m Thinking of Ending Things could be the story of a lonely man wondering what if, knowing what cannot be. It’s a cold, desolate place we’ve all been to. Some of us just stay longer.