Ciao, cinemaphiles!
This week Ian and Dave get weird – like crawling into someone’s head weird, like erasing your ex-girlfriend from your brain weird, like buying a house on fire weird.
Yes, on this episode we take a look at Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things – his loose – to say the least – adaptation of the Iain Reid novel.
What should we make of this highly symbolic film? Well, let Ian and David fansplain it for you!
Thanks for listening.
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I enjoyed your discussion more than I enjoyed the movie which I felt was uneven and torturous on its way to being “dark” and “cerebral” as Netflix categorizes it. But it did have some interesting ideas about how we use art to try to rewrite a better life for ourselves. Which seems appropriate during this time of firestorms and pandemics, and as I have some time on my hands here are a few of my takes on it.
I liked the surreal elements in Kaufman’s earlier screenplays. But his self-directed Synecdoche New York (2008) was extremely depressing. It has a similar theme to this movie but instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character who is an accomplished director trying to recreate his reality through theatre and searching for the right ending, we have an average guy who is trying, but failing, to fantasize a more fulfilling life for himself and is therefore “thinking of ending things.”
I think the movie is supposed to be a giant puzzle that drops a word or image here, a borrowed poem or monologue there, until the totality of Jake’s lonely existence is revealed. (In the first version of how they met, Jake tells Lucy he’s a cruciverbalist, a crossword puzzle maker or enthusiast.) But I think Kaufman planted way too obvious a clue when Jake said in the car that the Lucy of Wordsworth’s poems was an idealized woman. From that point on I knew his Lucy wasn’t real and so wasn’t in any real jeopardy. I knew then that her POV in the movie was a narrative device. I concluded that the old janitor was Jake and the action was taking place in his mind.
Ian’s dementia theory is interesting. I think the janitor makes a conscious decision to freeze to death like the lambs but maybe he’s motivated by experiencing early symptoms. Perhaps in real life he DID earn his diligence badge by taking care of his dying parents. But he has no one to take care of him and he doesn’t want to be put in that “warehousing of the elderly” system that Lucy rails against.
I didn’t think that Jake is gay or transgendered although his character may very well have been taunted as such for being into art, poetry and theatre. But he does have idealized vision of his manliness. The song “Lonely Room” which Jake sings is sung in the musical by Jud, the brutish and lust-driven farmhand who longs for a woman of his own and sets his sights on Laurie (another “L” named woman). But she’s in love with a handsome cowboy. In Jake’s version of the dream ballet from Oklahoma!, he’s the hero but that dream is killed when he realizes that in his life story, he’s really the unloved Jud. I always felt sorry for Jud. And I felt sorry for Jake.
A few random details: The lavish dinner reminded me of a Norman Rockwell painting.
The Bible quote was Isaiah 1:18 “though your sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Another snow reference.
Apparently Cassavetes and Zemekis represent the opposite ends of the gritty reality/maudlin fantasy scale of movie-making. Maybe that’s why the animated pig is so low-tech. If you have a Zemekis budget, you can CGI yourself a walking talking maggot-filled spirit pig, but in a Kaufman movie, a simply-coloured line drawing will suffice.
One thing I forgot about in discussing if Jake might have been gay is that his father called Bill Crystal a nancy. Which was odd. But if his father was saying that all actors are gay that might have been him putting the kibosh on his son’s interest in musical theatre.
That sounds exactly like what a bigoted dad might say. One other thing I was wondering about was whether Jake ever did bring a someone home for an awkward dinner or is just imagining what would’ve happened if he’d tried. Because I’ve been on that road trip to meet the parents of a boyfriend who isn’t long-term relationship material.
Also now that you bring it up, I think the “warehousing of the elderly” connects with the sheep in the barn packed in tight with no life as opposed to the lambs that made it out to freedom only to freeze to death.
Adulthood ? Shhhhiiiii…. Today, I bought my first agricultural model since something like 20 years… A die cast 953 IH combine harvester, a moiss’bat’ as we call it in France (contraction for Moissoneuse batteuse, in french we litteraly say what we combine). On the daily market of Aligre (Paris) there a side flea market and there was this model with the expedition voucher from the IH warehouse in Ris Orangis (place where I got one of my first summer job). But collection is not a game 🙂 BTW, David know everything about John Deere, nice!
Procrastination… the cat is out of the bag, normally any word with pro in it is cool. But really, being a pro in this domain. Not so cool. Or is it?
With adulthood it’s one of the other questions getting raised by my middle age crisis. And I think the more you do, the more it’s painfull. Do people with « boring lifes » procrastinates ?
There’s 2 procrastinations, doing nothing, day dreaming, watching pointless video on internet, taking a nap…. and there is the other way, starting new projects to avoid commitment to the existing ones.
I do both, sir. On one hand impossible taking a useful nap, when I really tired, because I’m loosing precious time doing nothing useful… resulting on not being rested and not having done anything. On the other hand, as I’ve got already too many projects and as I watch makers youtube videos I got 200 more new ideas with complicated technics to learn. So it take some time to learn about them, which tools, how much it will cost, can I found less complicated and expensive ways to get it done. Many hours on Amazon and Youtube… Learning a lot of thing but not doing anything.
And when you’ve got two many projects going on you’re getting frustrated because nothing is getting really done.
You guys got podcast done weekly and bi-weekly (?!!??) and yes you can count them, so there real, you’ve produce something tangible.
I’ve always got the felling that i’m doing nothing, but taking some distance, I could see that in fact there too many thing in the making. Like cooking everyday, shooting the dishes (with a camera) for my instagram and facebook account, on the facebook I was writing regularly texts about food to go with the pictures.
I dreamed for several years to get a CNC, I sure David can explain what it is :-), I got it, so need to learn fusion 360… and make videos for a new trilogy of social account about doing things (Facebook, youtube, instagram). So need to learn to use a video editing software in my case DaVinci Resolve. And learn animation technics and video editing. And buy stuff like lightning. And it had to look pro… I discarded 3D printing until now because the result where not as neat as I want, it need antialiasing to look really pro.
I bought, along side the CNC, tools to work wood and organised a desk/workshop on my « spare bedroom ». As I want to make mix technics stuff, wood and resin, so I got a vacuum chamber and re-purpose one of my compressor into a « depressor ». Oh, I didn’t tell you I try to get a cheap and technological, way to paint ? So compressed air tool, anyone? A real compressor is too expensive and bulky, why not using an aerograph, let’s see Amazon… 40 bucks. cool get one, not enough power ? Get a more power full, 80 bucks… but for surfacing you lack constant pressure because you’ve got no tank, so finally get one with a tank… finally? No because, nothing really replace a real compressor with a not too little tank… so finally I got one (back to square one). So many hours and euroz spent… to spare time and money/
Along side I got my Instagram photo account…
I told you… And It goes on and on.
When I listen for example to one of the many sneaky dragon podcasts, I need to play a little game on my phone (three for instance) because otherwise my brain goes on vacation after five minutes. If I read I need to have music to occupy the part or parts) which is not reading…
At school ? Same thing, I was distracted, day dreaming, they even say that they caught me humming in class… but I want proofs. I did not like it, got a lot of problems with orthography and grammar. Was too slow. Got bad evaluations. Repeated several grades… It was difficult. But when I tried to get out of the educational system I fail at it too.
Affer hardly getting my Bac (college diploma I think) I went for a two year technical course in computer science (BTEC Higher National Diploma, i think you call it). Done my final internship in a CNRS (National research center) laboratory with post graduates and intelligent people so I sign for 2 more years (Bachelor and master) at the university. But that was it, after that I was done with it! But when I make my internship for the master, my stage chief said to me you should post graduate so you will be an engineer and got executive level with the attached salary… So I did one more year.
For the sub question if I had a book which I remember to have impress me, « the secret book of dwarfs » , which challenges my gullibility. It’s a spoof scientific guide on the gnome’s life. I was knowing that dwarfs wasn’t existing but the shear amount of facts and the precision of the details makes you wonder if this was real or not. And the illustrations are superb.
That all folks, I stop procrastination and goes back to work or whatever need to be done… or not.
Oops wrong post. My bad. Sumimaseeeennnn (with a lot of bending).