![]() It's safe to assume that he never had a girlfriend in his life or any sort of lasting romantic companionship, so he romanticizes the woman he wishes would have been his girlfriend all those years ago. Jake sees the young woman from the bar as the one that got away. In the next sequence of his fantasy, J ake decides that his would-be girlfriend is also a waitress. In his real life as a janitor, the audience sees Jake on lunch break watching a romantic comedy in which the female lead is a waitress. He thinks about this young woman so much that moments from his day-to-day life influence the story he creates about her. Jake regrets that he never spoke to the young woman, so he imagines what life could've been like with her. He just watched her, and she recalls how unsettling that was. The young woman and old Jake have a confrontation at Jake's high school in the I'm Thinking of Ending Things ending, where she shares that Jake never approached her at the bar. The final sequence with his parents shows his mom at the end of her life and unable to care for herself, with his dad barely functioning. Jake's dad looks physically unwell, and his mom appears to be mentally unwell. Clues are scattered in the sequences where they're middle-aged the fact their health is starting to fail. While he and the young woman are visiting his parents, they are shown at different times in their lives - middle age, as younger adults, and then near the end of their lives. Jake's relationship with his parents may also run deeper than that. It's safe to assume he had a complicated relationship with his parents and wishes he could have made them proud. ![]() The audience sees a flash of his parents arguing. But, in the I'm Thinking of Ending Things ending, old Jake is shown in mental anguish, reliving memories of a painful life. In the fantasy sequences where they are introduced to the young woman, they fawn over Jake - especially his mom. ![]() Jake is an older man in real life, so his parents likely passed away years ago. That's because Jake is imagining them from different periods of their life. Jake's parents seem off-kilter from the get-go. Moments from his actual time as a young man just unconsciously wrap themselves around his elaborate fantasy. It's clear that Jake is a lonely older man in his present state of mind, so he spends his time imagining what his life should be like. Jake takes the young woman to an ice cream shop where female employees also look like they belong in the 1960s. The chilly and isolating atmosphere is wrapped in clues that Jake is remembering a time from decades ago.Īt his parents' house, Jake shows the young woman an old black-and-white photo of his dog, and she catches a glimpse of his mother looking as she would have dressed in the 1960s. The time in his imagination takes place in a blizzard, which adds to that cold feeling. The color palette on the screen during his fantasy is cold and dark, seemingly tinged in blue - which is synonymous with sadness. In Kael's review of A Woman Under the Influence, she knocks director Cassavetes for attending only to the oppressed woman: "When Nick yells, the picture's only concern is the effect on Mabel," rather than for all the characters, wounded and wounding alike.Even though Jake's fantasy in the Netflix original film is filled with a girlfriend and loving parents, the loneliness in his mind is evident. ![]() It'd be a shame if sexism were the focal point, though. The obvious reading might focus on Jake's sexism or misogyny - which we catch glimpses of with his temptation to pin his dysfunctions on his mother, or his willingness to pressure the young woman into uncomfortably vulnerable situations. Jake's mother (played fearfully and wonderfully by Collette) tells the young woman about her son's need for control. Jake is fully understandable only through the young woman he's dragging around all night. And here, in the inescapable self-consciousness of Kaufman, we find Jake once more. Characters quibble over words and their meanings: wow, sign, sissy, several. David Foster Wallace, Guy Debord, William Wordsworth, Anna Kavan and even the DSM mental health manual get explicit callouts and often direct quotes, along with Kael. The title and credits appear in Courier font, as though ripped from the script itself. In line with Kaufman's more recent films, Ending Things feels extremely heady, even writerly.
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