First things first: I love metafiction. I spent a whole semester of grad school researching metafiction for a lengthy critical essay and subsequent presentation, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Fictional characters who break the fourth wall, unconventional narrative forms, epistolary novels, fiction about fiction…hell, I love it all. I’ve even been known to use a metafictional technique or two in my own work. So, I should be the perfect audience for I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the new film by Charlie Kaufman. After all, Kaufman is known as a master of metafiction, with prior films like Adaptation and Synendoche, New York considered classics in the genre. A new film by Kaufman should be something to celebrate. Right?

Well. To be honest, I’m not very familiar with Kaufman’s work. I really liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which he wrote, and…um, that’s it, actually. One movie. I’ve never seen anything else. I know his reputation. I know a lot of people like him. And I know this movie had a lot of buzz, and the trailer looked creepy. So I saw it.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is based on a novel by Iain Reid. The setup of both the book and the movie are the same: a young woman (that’s the actual name of her character in the movie, played by Jessie Buckley) is going on a day trip with her newish boyfriend Jake to meet his parents for the first time. They spend the first twenty-two minutes of the film making small talk in the car on the way to the farmhouse where Jake’s parents live. Twenty-two minutes of chit-chat may sound like a slog, but it’s intellectual chit-chat, conversation about philosophy and William Wordsworth and the musical Oklahoma. We are also treated to scenes from the life of an elderly janitor: watching TV, making food. He’ll be important in a little bit.

Once the couple arrive at the farmhouse, things get decidedly surreal, and therefore decidedly more interesting. The great Toni Collette plays Jake’s mom, and she does high-strung strange better than almost anyone. Both she and Jake’s dad inexplicably age throughout the brief visit. The young woman discovers a poem she purportedly wrote in a book of poetry in Jake’s old bedroom. She receives a number of cryptic phone calls from an unknown man, and finds a bunch of janitor(!) uniforms in the washer in the basement. A photograph of Jake on the wall is actually a picture of the young woman. The scenes in the farmhouse have that what-the-hell-is-going-on vibe that I really enjoy in a horror movie, and it’s done well here.

Unfortunately, we have to get back in the car. We have thirty more minutes of parlor conversation. Jake and his girlfriend talk about the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence (Jake’s girlfriend hated it, and reviews it at length). They talk about The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord. They stop for ice cream (in a snowstorm). And, eventually, they end up at Jake’s old high school, where things finally come to a head. I guess. 

Okay. SPOILER time. In Reid’s book, which I have not read, we at this point learn that (SPOILER)  the young woman in the story is actually a fictional construct, an idealized version of a woman Jake met briefly in a bar years ago. Jake is also a construct of sorts, a best self, an idealized self. Because the actual Jake is…the janitor, of course, a character we have only seen in brief snippets during the movie. 

Confused yet? Me, too. Still, the book version of this big reveal sounds intriguing. One of my favorite metafictional conceits is the fictional character who discovers they are real, and vice-versa. Many of my favorite writers have played with this idea to good effect (Peter Straub, Stephen King, Richard Christian Matheson, etc.), testament to its appeal. I’m guessing it would have worked here, too….but Kaufman has other ideas. Instead of giving our young woman her moment of shock and horror when she realizes she’s a figment of someone’s imagination, Kaufman ushers her off-stage. For the last twenty minutes of the film, we get:

• An odd ballet number,
• An animated pig walking the hallways of Jake’s old high school with the naked janitor,
• A speech from the movie A Beautiful Mind, and
• A musical number from Oklahoma.

Does any of this make any sense? Of course not. Yeah, you can get on Wikipedia and read reviews and figure out all of this is supposed to represent Jake’s interior thoughts and his conflation of media with culture, but it’s all bullshit. Kaufman discards what he sees as a too-obvious ending and replaces it with a pretentious muddle. 

I wish I could be more positive about this film. I want to be. Like I said before: I love metafiction. I prize ambiguity and complexity in creative work. But for me, every good story, no matter how subtle or “difficult,” requires an emotional connection to a character. I have to care about your people if your story is to matter. Even if your characters are props (literally!) I have to be able to root for them or against them. They have to engage me. If they don’t, I’m closing the book, and turning off my television. Kaufman valued his clever auteur gimmicks over a coherent plot resolution. Hence, his movie sucks.

A lot of people think otherwise. Reviews for I’m Thinking of Ending Things have been relatively positive. Some have been glowing. I learned from one critic that the review of A Woman Under the Influence by Jake’s girlfriend was lifted verbatim from a Pauline Kael review of the film in 1974. So if I have any praise for Kaufman’s film, it’s that its instilled in me a desire to read more Pauline Kael movie reviews. That’s something, I suppose.