“i’m thinking of ending things” a triumph in disguise
i recently sat down and watched kaufman's film mentioned in the title above. going in, i was getting myself ready for a tear-jerker, however what i found was something different. it's an odd movie, very contemplative, almost certainly pretentious and definitely one for the "film bros" out there.
the film starts slow and doesn't really pick up in pace until the last fifteen or twenty minutes. i don't mind this, as the space is filled with philosophical musings and i love that shit. the protagonist is this lady damned to be in the passenger seat of her life's journey. her boyfriend, jake sits on the driver side. they don't know each other very well, their conversations are uncomfortable and forced and for most of the drive, the woman is silently musing about 'ending things' while her boyfriend tries desperately to connect with her to very little avail. either way, its the middle of winter and now you're trapped on this long car ride to go see this man's parents.
as someone who has in the past, been trapped in the depths of suicidal ideation, it felt familiar. there's nothing particularly dramatic about the tone that she's delivering these thoughts. sure, at a first glance the subject matter certainly is concerning but at the same time it made me feel seen.
throughout my life, i've had more than a couple stints where suicide was an unwelcome companion in the attic of my mind. if you're a bit of a doormat as i am, unwelcome visitors are usually given at least some form of hospitality. a glass of water, a chair to sit in, etc. sort of fundamentally, this can be what living with suicidal ideation can feel like. you don't want it there, but there it is and there's no use in being scared of it when it's with you every minute of every day.
slowly, as the film progresses, you see several glimpses of an elderly janitor of a children's high school; mopping the floors, cleaning the windows, all with a similarly quiet peaceful resolve as i mentioned earlier. these moments are odd and off putting as they're interspersed with the scenes at jake's parent's house. at the house, it feels not unlike eraserhead. the family is.. weird. they make sexual commentary when maybe they shouldn't, jake's attitude throughout is easily upturned, and the general tempo of the room is just, uncomfortable in that way i suppose rooms can be when you're meeting your potential future in-laws and you don't want to disappoint them or your partner.
in the interest of not making this excessively long, it's slowly hinted that the janitor is the real the protagonist of the film. that he is jake in another time. the young lady damned to the passenger seat of her existence is never referred to by the same name twice. she's not real. more than that, none of the film was real except for the moments with the janitor. the film up until this point is his personal musings about the life he could have had, but didn't. jake and the girlfriend go through all three arcs of a relationship. from unfamiliar to friendly to cruel, the dynamics that maybe an abused child would have witnessed in a breaking home.
this part is sad, the realization that the janitor can't fathom a relationship that ends happily. however, this is also where the triumph starts to become apparent, at least to me. this is an old man who has found a job he doesn't hate and he is physically safe there. not that a job makes a man, but given that the job is all we know about him, really, i think it's beautiful that he's in a space where he can quietly contemplate about what could have been in this romantic sense. now that we know that the girlfriend was always just a figment of his musings, we can see the philosophies that he holds dearest, carefully wrapped in this character that he's made in his mind. in the younger version of himself, i think we see the reality that he's glad never came to fruition. he never became the cruel, unconsidering boyfriend.
the janitor is elderly and he's presented with a crossroads. it's never shown or told but it's there all the same. two paths, one that leads to a painful death by heart attack or cancer accompanied with years in condescending hospice care, or the other option; go out on your own terms now, when you're conscious that your agency is not guaranteed for much longer. of course this is very morbid, but at the same time i feel strongly that this is the triumph that makes this film beautiful. for a man who has had so little control in the way his life has played out, who has made peace with being a humble janitor, he has ultimate agency in his final moments. the short of it would be to say he froze himself to death in his truck, but there's more there. hypothermia is not a painful death. you feel warm and fuzzy, then quietly burn out to the tune of a hallucinative dream. a last hurrah for a humble man's existence.