Review of: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

 Review of I’m Thinking of Ending Things

The Over-Examined Life is Not Worth Pondering

“I wonder whether your madness isn't the worst kind. You act healthy, act it so well that everyone believes you--everyone except me, because I know how rotten you are.”

― Alma, from Bergman’s Persona

“I don’t care what you think unless it is about me.”

― Kurt Cobain

 

“All boyhood friends told me I’d fail. Spend my lifetime friendless or in jail. And all the girls at the school dance… would give me a second chance….” 

― I Won’t Look Back (song), The Dead Boys 

Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things is predictably enigmatic. It was fun to follow the non-linear, M.C. Escher-esque, time sequences underpinning the love story in his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was equally entertaining to see his tragic-comic artist fight the army of metaphorical windmills in Being John Malkovich. This track record of being funny, off-beat and artistically daring is the perfect sensibilty for a filmmaker wanting to translate Iain Reid’s quirky novel. Reid’s protagonist, a latter-day Walter Mitty obsessed with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, is cut from the same cloth as many of Kaufman’s anti-heroes. Unfortunately Kaufman became seduced by the foibles of Reid’s creation. The protagonist creates a world that is only accessible through his own mind. Kaufman film is for Kaufman, not a general audience.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is composed of a horror film preceded by a twenty minutes comedic short. The opening features a new girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) meeting the boyfriend’s parents in a remote location. This opening segment possesses a masterful use of the young woman’s internal monologue. It is witty and unsparingly honest. She says what dare not be said: I am going along with the travesty of this relationship because, because…. I don’t know. The boyfriend (Jesse Piemons) interrupts her caustic internal banter at just the right moments to certify that there is no hope of a future. If only Kaufman had held firm to this wry back and forth featuring Jessie. This film could have been an interesting social touch-stone in the vein of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. A charismatic contemporary figure manages the odd paths of American romance. Sadly it turns to the funny/horror genre in the vein of Get Out, without Jordan Peele’s command of comedy. The creepiness rises exponentially as the focus shifts from Jessie to Jesse, whose character goes by “Jake”.

This Jake is not the Jason of slasher lore. Ironically his childhood home and parents would seem the perfect ingredients to produce a psychopathic misfit. The older couple have a histrionic quality that takes them out of the real world. Toni Collette and David Thewlis play their parts beautifully but fail to match the wit and lightheartedness of initial road trip sequence. They, purposefully, overstep their oddness. Their reactions and facial expressions exhibit people primed to be inappropriate. Whereas the Jesse and Jessie have a quirky believability, the mom and dad are pure gothic caricature. The house is as over-the-top as the other-worldly couple. There are scratches on the door to the basement, which Jessie is warned never to enter. Even the family dog is off-kilter. All dogs shake, but no dogs shakes uncontrollably for, what seems like, a full minute. The stylization feeds the narrative in that this is a film about Jake. The Jessie-centric drive sequence becomes a disjointed preface. Unfortunately Jesse Piemons dissolves into the same psychosis as his parents — he tackles the role beautifully but Kaufman undercuts him by making his pathology as unpalatable as his mother and father. Behind the shape-shifting, time-bending pyrotechnics are a very uninspired creepy mavericks. The denouement arrives when Jake returns to his high school after the young couple leaves the farmhouse in a blizzard. Throughout the first two segments there are a strange series of non-sequiturs involving an elderly janitor at a high school. He turns out to be the key to this cinematic roman-a-clef.

Spoiler alert, he is everyone; or more specifically: all the people we have seen are embodiments of his projections from an un-lived life. That charming love-interest is a mirage of what might have been. That visit to the ice cream stand is peopled with former crushes. One wonders about their fate. Did Jake’s infatuation go beyond ephemeral day-dreaming? Did bad things occur in the real world? All those empty milk shake containers in the garbage at the entrance to the high school hint at something more sinister. Another disturbing clue: the forbidden basement’s secret turns out to be a washing machine filled with the janitor’s clothes. Is he washing blood stains after a night of ravishing the innocents? Is Jake a misogynistic incel lunatic bent on retribution? What is it, in Jake, that we are celebrating? The eeriness undercuts all the triumphalism of the final scene. Are we supposed to join with the audience of made-up creations in the high school gym and cheer on this ambiguous anti-hero? Is it enough to have a vivid imagination?

We can be very thankful for one of Jake’s dreams: the recreation of the eerie dance sequence from the 1955 film version of Oklahoma. This is the spiritual highlight of I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Kaufman steps away from the word-driven, proscenium-arch motif that weighs down much of the film. Even the initial journey to the parents has an endless claustrophobic feel. The close-ups are occasionally positioned outside of the vehicle as if to break up the monotony. It doesn’t. The dialogue is strong, but film is a visual medium. The dance sequence’s blast of color and movement rescues the audience from the claustrophobic car, the barn filled with dead animals and the gothic farm-house. Kaufman’s visual idealization of romance is breathtaking but no amount of choreography can mask this solipsistic loner. Jake’s actions speak louder than his imaginings. He abandons his love in a parking lot during a blizzard. He chases the bad-guy janitor, who is an incarnation of himself. The romance is secondary to his wanting to play the part of the hero. But it is important to note: he is rescuing HIMSELF. Dogs chasing their tales would seem a shallow foundation for a feature film… but Kaufman thinks otherwise. Perhaps he thought the hollow center could be masked by a veneer of cultural references.

Literary and pop-culture allusions dominant even the most mundane snippits of dialogue. The girlfriend, credited as “the young woman”, goes by Lucy. This revelation coincides with an in-depth discussion of the poet Wordsworth, who happens to have a series of poems about unrequited love called, Lucy. Jake’s character might be named for Hemingway’s protagonist in The Sun Also Rises. That Jake is literally castrated which metaphorically reflects Jake’s inability with the ladies. This is just the names of the central characters. It is as if Kaufman believes movie audiences are akin to people who obsess about the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle. Unfortunately being clever is distinct from being captivating. One might spend years pondering the meaning of the red raincoat in Nicolas Roeg’s literary horror classic Don’t Look Now. Kaufman’s adaptation of Ian Reid’s novel fails to spark the interest in unraveling the mystery. It is the difference between homework and heartfelt discovery.

What is Kaufman yammering-on about? The real stuff might be found in re-watching the classic Oklahoma! . Behind the triumphant celebration song, with the refrain “WE’RE DOING FINE!!!”, lies a tale of coercion, attempted murder, spite, jealously, suicide, class-warfare… all saddled in a Native American territory at the cusp of statehood. Did I mention the evil foreigner from the Middle East? Rodgers and Hammerstein know how to make the unsettling story literally… sing. Kaufman performed a yeoman’s effort in unpacking the brimstone & treacle of America’s heartland. Sadly he carries the same fatal flaw as Jake. He lives in his head. He might want to fastidiously unpack the minutia of a deranged weirdo. A general audience, however, prefers the elan of exciting, unambiguous villains. Stephen King’s blood spattered prom night in Carrie is more entertaining than the intellectual pomposity of Jake’s graduation. No one wants to spend time with the real-life Ed Gein, the depraved human taxidermist who was the basis for the character Hannibal Lector. But people wouldn’t mind having dinner with the character played by Anthony Hopkins… as long as the spoon is long enough. No one, including the figments of his imagination, wants to be near Jake. (maybe with the exception of his mother — but that only proves my point regarding his abhorrence) Let’s hope Kaufman’s next project has less matter, more art… fewer ideas and more people. Sometimes thinking too much can get in the way of living, or making art, or making love…. Just ask Jake.

Hereditary (2018)

Review of the film Hereditary (2018)

Forgetting Our Heritage

“A Report on the Banality of Evil” - Hannah Arendt, subtitle to Eichmann in Jerusalem

Hereditary, Ari Aster’s horror feature, casts a dark spell over reviewers. Many believe this to be a seminal masterpiece. Here are a smattering of accolades: “craft(s) its own scare vocabulary” (Slate), “new horror classic… Oscar calling” (Rolling Stone), “it’s own spin on terror” (The New York Post), “It’s pure emotional terrorism” (the AV Club)….. The last blurb might be true, but not in the way the critic intended. What does it mean when so many knowledgable people are moved by second rate writing, directing and storytelling? Hereditary is over-wrought, over-thought and derivative. It steals and butchers a genuine classic from half a century ago that features an innocent mother who is impregnated by the devil himself. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby established this sub category of horror, it is unfortunate Aster has so little to add to this well worn genre.

Hereditary borrows the troupe of hosting the demon but the film, metaphorically, goes to hell in hand-basket. There is nothing in the Aster remake that improved upon Polanski’s work. In fact, just the opposite. Rosemary’s Baby and it’s spawn, The Exorcist & The Omen, gave us clearly delineated actions that made sense in the carefully constructed logic of the film. Hereditary is just a muddle. Rosemary’s husband’s betrayal is brought on by greed and vanity. This dovetails beautifully with the Christian exhortations against such indulgences. This also made the film a cultural touchstone at height of the 60s social chaos. Who can forget the pregnant Rosemary sitting her obstetricians office picking up a copy of Time Magazine entitled “Is God Dead?”. Hereditary sheds no light on the origin of the darkness. Why is the matriarch sacrificing her daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and grandson to the demon? Her motivations are as opaque as most of the principles. What was the grandmother’s original association with the cult? Why does the husband indulge his wife when she has tried to kill their son? Pouring paint thinner on the boy and trying to light a match would be sign to most humans that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the two unattended. It would also be a red flag regarding joining the wife in forcing the son to participate in an impromptu seance to revive the dead sister. Did I mention that this young girl was killed in an auto mis-hap caused by the brother? That might have also prompted the father to forbid the wife from creating a miniature doll-house recreation of the event, complete with the daughter’s tiny decapitated head. Daddy seems to reason that Mommy is an artist by profession and therefore has license to torment the son. Incidentally that car tragedy was triggered by another bizarre decision. Why would a mother force a teenage boy to take his socially maladjusted younger sister to unchaperoned party? The plot conceits might be acceptable in a more thoughtfully constructed story. Unfortunately the twists and turns are made to showcase the horror. All the pressure builds for an obligatory feast of carnage during the last 10 minutes, replete with another decapitation. Mother mimics her daughters demise by losing her head by her own hand. This filmmaker felt all the “turn of screw” waiting is justified in a finale of immolation and mutilation. It was his chef d’oeuvres, but in a negative sense. In mature work the gruesome spectacle is an internal part of the story and not a showy bacchanalia of gore. The director Nicolas Roeg proves the point in his seminal horror film, Don’t Look Now. Roeg’s single display of a throat being slashed has infinitely more punch than Aster’s parade of horrors.

There are bright spots amongst the missed opportunities. Toni Collette’s rendering of the mother matches the brilliance of another tortured parent, Shelly Duvall in The Shinning. Alex Wolff, as the son, show an ability to channel emotion with simple gesture and expression. Aster borrows a trick from Joseph Losey’s Accident. In that film the facade of a country house accompanies the soundtrack of a car racing and crashing. The result amplifies the horror. Aster has audio the mother’s discovery of her daughter’s headless body being seen through the despondent dead-pan face of the young son. It is a beautifully rendered grizzly moment, made strong by Wolff’s grim visage of despair, guilt and shame. The sister, Milly Shapiro, is also effective as the embodiment creepiness. She brings to mind a sinister version of the 1970’s oddball child-actor Mason Reese. There is a discordant melding of wholesome innocence and weird deformity. You don’t have to be a child psychologist, priest or physiologist to know that something is wrong, in an unearthly way. The most famous member of the cast, Gabriel Byrne is the least interesting character and performance. One imagines the producers & director saying, “So Gabriel, lets try an American accent”. His response would have been in his natural brogue, “No, I’m just gonna just talk the way I talk”. I’m sure he took the part thinking no one would ever see a film based on the clunky script. Maybe this experience taught him the devil works in mysterious ways. On cannot blame the lack of effort as the character is, metaphorically, a castrated dimwit. What would motivate a talented actor to take the part of an unlikeable foil that allows his family to drift into disaster? Maybe money is the root of all evil.

One wonders if the dark forces are strong or whether the good guys are just too damn dumb. This illustrates the central problem with Hereditary. None of the set-pieces, such as the father, are rooted in the broader narrative. In Polanski’s precursor, all the side characters, the husband, the lady next door, the doctor are central to the cult and its agenda. The cast of Hereditary are primarily walk-ons pushing plot points, rather than furthering the devil’s work. The cadre of demons that appear in the finale, are completely absent from the central narrative with the except of the woman from the grief support group. Once again her role, inspiring the grieving mother to wake her family for an impromptu seance, is crippled by credulity. Perhaps the mother’s miniature dioramas should have come to life to push the mother along her path to madness and suicide. Unfortunately they woodenly reflect the mother’s psychological deterioration. All those oddly terrifying still life models never dynamically inform the story. Yes she recreates the accident, but the art needed to be a character in itself in the manner of the mansion in the Shinning. When you expend that amount of camera time on those little rooms and shrunken manikins, it should dovetail with the main event — i.e. the cult’s plan to raise one of the king’s of the underworld. In order for this to have resonance Aster needs to be more in touch with our present zeitgeist of evil. Who are our devils?

As the old saying goes, “we live in interesting times” and the list of dark forces grows with every news cycle. Even the weather has been cast in the battle of good and evil. Aster’s scenario, anti-Christ in the burbs, is old hat. Our tech titans, the ones that speak of living forever and doing no evil, are the perfect candidates for the modern Mephistopheles. Their forbidden fruit is the promise of a better tomorrow if you, painlessly, hand your every waking (and sleeping) moment. The challenge of the future is to rise above merely being algorithms in the service of commerce. The films Ex Machina and Her are recent features that illustrate the plight of man’s soul in the man vs. machine conundrum. Aster must be reminded, the devil is in the details. It is not enough to invoke the genuine article. It is the ingenuity of evil that it parades as goodness. The job of a director is to give reason for supping with a long spoon. Hereditary shows the specter of evil in our genes. Perhaps it’s really in our screens.