In this time of seeking out escapist fare from our small screen menu, choosing a night's diversion involves matters of taste and viewer suitability (e.g. are there children and those with tame mainstream sensibilities in the room?). Towards the top of the Netflix heap at the moment is I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the latest head-twisting adventure from director-writer Charlie Kaufman. Be forewarned (or titillated): in American cinema, there is escapism…and then there is the eccentric escapism according to Kaufman., The loveable iconoclast has gotten away with his somehow touching pranks stretching back to Being John Malkovich, followed by a dizzy, mold-busting filmography including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and as screenwriter of the Spike Jonez-directed Adaptation (which had some shots on location at Earl Warren Showgrounds’ Orchid show, incidentally).
As with Adaptation, in which Kaufman gleefully altered Susan Orlean’s book source, I’m Thinking of Ending Things finds him messing with the very DNA and narrative thread of Iain Reid’s original novel. What we’re left with is a re-imagined world and a wild ride in which the surrealism sneaks up on us, amidst the sly cultural references to Oklahoma!, Wordsworth, Pauline Kael’s righteous rhetoric, pilfered poetry and characters zooming back and forth in time and age.
As for a rational through-line to help explain the enigma, Kaufman’s tale may be one merely bouncing around inside the trouble head of our protagonist Jake (Jess Plemons). On the surface, the film adheres to the genre involving a couple (brilliantly, elastically played by Plemons and newcomer Jessie Buckley) on a road trip to one partner’s parents back home on the farm (Toni Collette and David Thewlis, in suitably dry-comic form). Romantic tension and kindly banter, philosophical asides, hometown nostalgia and late-night perils are encountered along the way.