![]() ![]() He had been exhibiting strange behaviour and developed a rash on his arms and neck. He had been working at a school for 30 years after a failed academic career of some sort. We learn he was a very lonely, isolated man who was highly intelligent and worked as a school custodian (janitor), who had become almost non verbal, who had no wife and kids and whose parents were long dead. ![]() The conversations gradually tell the story of a man who has killed himself in the school, he’s found in a closet and had locked up the school from the inside. ![]() This is presented in italics and these voices are very clearly not the narrator. Though the main body of the text is written in first person, told by the narrator, between each chapter is inserted a snippet of a conversation. While the main narrative of the two is the same, the book has an added structural element. In the film, at the start where we see the person who turns out to be the janitor muttering in his apartment, what he is saying is what she hears on the answer phone. This means on a rewatch you understand the calls are coming from herself – or rather the janitor – but they don’t have the same level of creepiness as in the book. It’s harder, of course, to get that fact across in the movie, when the narrator is nameless so instead in the movie they come from names like Louisa and Yvonne – Louisa is a name that Jake’s parents have called her, and Yvonne is the name of the character in the romcom that the janitor watches and later borrows the storyline from. In the book we are told these calls are coming from her own number. In the book and the film the narrator receives incessant phone calls which she doesn’t want to pick up. I’m Thinking of Ending Things Review: Charlie Kaufman Does Existential Horror By Rosie Fletcher The Phone Calls They have an uncomfortable and awkward dinner with the parents, and the narrator finds a picture that looks like her, some disturbing paintings in the basement (more on this later) and has awkward individual conversations with both parents. She relates their meet-cute – they’re at a pub quiz, his team name is Brezhnev’s Eyebrows, he uses the words ‘ipseity’ and ‘cruciverbalist’ – which she doesn’t understand. The two drive to the farmhouse whilst discussing various philosophical and existential ideas along the way. How once a thought is there, it sticks, and how only thought is really ‘truth’ – that you can fake actions but not thoughts. The voiceover from the start of the film is exactly how the book begins, and the book talks a lot about thought. An unnamed female narrator is on a trip with her boyfriend Jake to visit his parents but she is having doubts about the relationship. Having already read the book might remove some of the mystery elements but the film is so evocative and sad and there’s still loads to be gained even if you know the deal from the off. It’s not so much of a ‘twist’ as a slow reveal. The film has horror elements but it has more in common with Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York – a beautiful, existential lament – a tragedy with elements of horror, thriller and mystery that encourages the viewer to understand what they are watching much earlier. If you already know the ending of the book it just isn’t anywhere near as scary – and approached cold for the first time, this is a really unsettling read. If you can, you must read the book first because the book is a horror/thriller. ![]()
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