*This post contains major spoilers.
When someone says “I’m thinking of ending things,” one would wonder what the “end” means, and what the “things” are. This is how the movie “I’m thinking of ending things” plays out through the entire duration.
As an unsuspecting audience, it may seem that the young woman in the movie, who assumed multiple names by the end such as Lucy, Louisa, Lucia and Ames, is trying to end the relationship with her new boyfriend Jake. But even with Lucy’s (for convenience’s sake, we will call her Lucy) nonchalant behaviour and seemingly well hidden thought of “ending things,” Jake seems to almost read her mind. Every time she thinks, Jake interferes. And this continues throughout their drive to Jake’s parents’ farmhouse.
Despite the fact that Jake invited Lucy over to his parents’ place, he doesn’t seem ready to be vulnerable in front of her. Maybe the several weeks or years, or what seems like a vague amount of time of their relationship wasn’t enough to break the wall that is still between them.
Jake is ashamed of pasts; deaths of a couple pigs caused by maggots, a seemingly loving parents who are not as intelligent as he hoped them to be, and the basement where his supposedly failed endeavours lie. The house is a mess, not a literal mess, but a jumble of time and personalities as Lucy tries to pick out the real parents from the multiple characters that she is presented with. When she eventually goes down to the basement where Jake forcibly stops her from going, she realizes her identity too is, and has been malleable. The poet turned painter, and then a quantum physicist, later a gerontologist, later takes on the role of a server from a TV show who recommends the Santa Fe Burger supposedly to Jake.
Things get even more mind-bending when Jake and Lucy reach Tulsey Town, an ice cream shop in the middle of the winter during a snow storm. Jake is reluctant to show his face to the two female servers, who seem to be looking down on Jake. Another server, who Lucy thinks she has seen before, speaks abstractly, saying that Lucy doesn’t have to go forward in time. However, Lucy decides to move forward with Jake, and heads to an unwanted destination which is Jake’s old high school.
Jake disappears shortly after the couple’s fit caused by what only looks like Jake’s imagination of someone taking a peak of their kiss. Lucy is infuriated after having waited for a long time for Jake to come back and drive her home. When she goes into the school building, the janitor, who the audience has seen from time to time throughout the movie, doesn’t seem surprised at all of her presence and her hazy memory of her boyfriend Jake. It was only natural, considering that everything is playing in the janitor’s mind.
He looks back on what could have happened. He could have asked the girl, or a girl, for her number and had a successful relationship that led to his and his family’s happiness. Instead, his older self, who failed miserably even with a high academic standing, kills his younger self and continues to live an undesirable life, jeered at by school girls (the two workers that refused to serve at Tulsey Town) while relating to a student who is always being left behind (the girl who advises Lucy to stop moving forward in time).
Overwhelmed by reality, Jake is stripped bare in his car. He is called to Tulsey Town, where frowns are turned into smiles, where the pig who died by maggots urges Jake to join him. The pig leads the physicist, Jake, to go back to his elementary form, convincing him that it isn’t so bad to be a ghost.
The last scene is perhaps the last thought or hope that Jake has, where he receives a Nobel Prize and sings about finding the love of his life. Lucy, his parents and others who reside in his memory are clearly wearing makeup to make themselves look older. This is where it becomes clear that the scene is made up from Jake’s mind, and he isn’t able to imagine the people he remembers as naturally old. It is perhaps the best made-up memory that one can have — receiving a prize and applause from the loved ones. And with that, Jake is gone.
