9/4/20 - I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (2020) - 7+/10

To explain is to limit…to confine... to simplify. As one should expect, Kaufman drives us down the blinding roadways of introspection and all-purpose meaning here. It is disturbing without sacrificing the enjoyment to be found in this tangled bizarre MC Escher of a mental painting. For the jumbled bag of experiences and dreams that I am, that painting was wondrous.

Its a dizzying psychological roller coaster; a twilight zone within the hippocampus. Strangely voyeuristic, with inner glimpses of despair, longing and unfulfillment falling like snow from the dark skies. But it is not a passive watch. Rather, it is a cinematic “when you point one finger, there are 4 pointing back at you”, an engagement of the act of watching itself, having your psyche glued to the electric diodes.

Provided a stunning path for the world to recognize how tremendous Jessie Buckley is, if you had somehow missed her charm thus far. No end was given for Jesse Plemons here, as we inhale another whiff of the smoldering intensity that lightly smokes from within the “everyman” actor. And how could one forget Toni Collette, marvelous again in her unhinged from reality motherly person, along with David Thewlis; both being equal parts embarrassingly funny and wincingly disquiet. 

  It does what it wants and provides an uncompromised full-fledged unique vision. Alternating in tone, purpose and affect, as much to its sensibility, benefit and detriment, it flagellates collective existence with a flail of metaphor and the metaphysical.

 Not for all or even many, but brilliant nonetheless. It meanders and undulates beneath my quizzical slippers, playfully slithering as to avoid my full grip, which left me struggling not to slip on its unreconciled floors of honesty and bewilderment. It was a struggle at times, and yet, I enjoyed the experience and appreciated the multitudinous forays into all that we are, were, and wish to be; be it seen in others or ourselves.