I'm Still Thinking About: I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Content Warning: Suicide “Suicide becomes the story, the mythology, the cautionary tale.” Like a lot of metaphor-heavy art, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is happy to sit down and tell you what it’s actually about. Charlie Kaufman’s latest abstract exploration of how the stories we tell ourselves shape who we are is the defeated antonym to Synecdoche, New York . Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard explores the highs and lows of human experience and expressing the story of oneself, whereas Jessie Buckley’s lead is shifting, unable to face herself, denied at every turn, and inevitably consumed by the narrative of another. Her identity is dissolved into nothing by the inability to literally be herself. The point-of-view protagonist, credited as “young woman” and called many names over the film’s run, contemplates the title statement, which seems to be about ending her relationship with a kind but uncertain Jake (play...