explanation of im thinking of ending things

Narrative shifts from dance, to theatre, to even animation and special effects as Jake the Janitor sits out in his truck, getting snowed under by the storm. In I’m thinking of Ending Things, despite Lucy’s confusion and terror at certain points in the story, the viewer is much more susceptible to the ruptures in reality than Lucy herself.Īnd as the film ends, even though the shift in the driving force of the narrative from Lucy to Jake is made pretty clear by bringing her and Jake the Janitor face to face, the narrative structure blows up even further at the revelation instead of getting cleaned up. What seems to be a thought in Lucy’s mind at the beginning of the film, of ending things with Jake, turns out to be an extension of Jake’s own, much more existential and lonely thought of ending things completely of taking his own life.Ī stream of consciousness, mixed with fantasy and glimpses of reality, drive the narrative to reach an ending that doesn’t wrap things up neatly through a clean and simple revelation and suicide a loose example of such a climax would be the one in Scorsese’s Shutter Island, where the breaks in reality are much less obvious to us, even though there are small leaks through Dicaprio’s reality throughout the film. Stairwells that keep repeating, dogs that keep appearing and disappearing, parents that keep aging backwards and forwards. There are constant continuity breaks- from reality to time to even Lucy’s character, everything is as if two-three parallel universes are thrown into a blender together.

Concepts, sounds, characters, overlap as the story shifts from Jake and Lucy to ‘Jake the janitor’ going about his day at the high school narrative dipping in and out of Jake the janitor’s consciousness. There are hints suggesting this throughout the film. In simple words, the entire film is happening in Jake’s head, a lonely and dejected janitor at a high school in his own hometown. Therefore, this is the only point in the article where I will be talking about the ‘sense’ of the whole story. Yet, the experience of watching I’m thinking of Ending Things without that information leaves the viewer to interpret the narrative in quite a few ways.

There are only hints- obvious ones, and vague ones- throughout the film. Of course, the overall theme from the book persists in Kaufman’s version as well- the entire world of the film is going on in Jake’s head, and it isn’t revealed explicitly anywhere.

Explanation of im thinking of ending things