Kaufman’s directorial return is surrealist dream

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman has proven to be one of the most original minds in the film industry. The Academy Award-winning scribe has penned beloved films from Being John Malkovich to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which debuted on Netflix on Sept. 4, marks Kaufman’s highly-anticipated return to the director’s chair, closing the gap on a five-year absence that began with 2015’s Anomalisa. Based on the novel of the same name, Kaufman’s latest film is also his most idiosyncratic — a surrealist dream vivified by arresting visuals and dizzying concepts.

The premise is simple: a young woman (Jessie Buckley) goes on a road trip with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents. The end result, however, is anything but. I’m Thinking of Ending Things explores themes from aging, the consumption of art, masculinity, to (the expectedly existential) meaning of life. What’s refreshing here is the subtlety with how Kaufman explores these well-trodden themes — sometimes with minute character changes and recurring details that act as pieces of a well-groomed puzzle.

However, there are times when Kaufman’s film jumps ahead of itself, and only coheres with a decent amount of mental acrobatics. Kaufman’s sequences seem disjointed, and the lack of a clearcut conclusion may be confusing or even frustrating for some. But that unease is also the point — to create tension from a dream-like reality that reflects on the timelessness of life flashing before one’s eyes. The discontinuity that Kaufman creates, like a dream, forces one to make sense of events after the fact, rather than sit through a spoon-fed linear narrative.

Much of the success of that ethereal vision can be attributed to Academy-nominated cinematographer ?ukasz ?al, who imbues this film with an inching dread. Often, the camera pans preeminently before a character moves, and sometimes it is tucked neatly under the stairs, or takes the perspective of a mobile but invisible and ever-creeping third person spectator.

?al effectively compounds an aura of claustrophobia: the film is shot in a cramped 4:3 ratio, and the frame-within-a-frame shot composition accompanied by striking symmetry makes characters feel artificially trapped and dictated by the seemingly supernatural occurrences happening around them.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things might be the most original film of the year — a labyrinthian effort that’s sure to excite Kaufman’s most avid fans and a worthy trip for those that don’t mind putting in work watching films.