![]() If the paintings and his mother are to be believed, he had a gift for art. ![]() ![]() Through the parents, one can also find Jake looking back at his life. But then, it is all his imagination, so the parents are a part of his imagination too. It appears through his demeanor that he is there to present his girlfriend to them, to show them that despite being just “diligent”, he can do better in life. Despite the warmth they mean to exude towards the Girlfriend, Jake seems oddly distant from them. The moment the Girlfriend and Jake enter the house, we know that something is amiss with his parents. The events of ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ begin with a trip to Jake’s parents’ house. And because she comes from his mind, she knows them too. She also recognizes the swing-set outside a decrepit house, and she also recognizes one of the girls as the ice-cream shop even though she hasn’t seen them before. Because, through association, aren’t they essentially the same person? This also leads us to the moment where the Girlfriend looks at Jake’s photo and sees herself. As to why she is thinking of ending things, we can tie that to the janitor’s desire of ending things for himself. At least, they wouldn’t have pitied him or tried to smother him with sympathy for not being able to find someone for himself.īut none of that ever happened, so the woman that we meet at the beginning of the film is nowhere but in Jake’s imagination. He thinks about all the things that they would have agreed or disagreed on, and he thinks about their first visit to his parents’ house because in bringing home a girl, which he had never done before, his parents would have thought better of him. Now, in his old age, when he is utterly alone, with no friends, or family, or loved ones, he is wondering what would have happened had he really talked to her that night. ![]() But because he was shy, he never found the courage to go up to her and talk to her. He never talked to her, even though he thought about it a lot. On top of that, she can’t describe what Jake looks like!Ĭonsidering all of this, it only makes sense that she is not Jake’s girlfriend. She also calls him a creeper and says that when he had been eying her, she wished her boyfriend was there. And eventually, in the end, at the school, while talking to the janitor, she speaks about Jake as a person she hadn’t registered in a crowd, like a mosquito who bit her forty years ago, just a passing interaction. She talks about her paintings, but then it turns out that they are Jake’s paintings. She says she is a poet, but then also doesn’t pay heed to Wordsworth. From their conversations, it looks like both of them are in the same field of work. Jake even calls her Ames, short for Amy, at one point, and she doesn’t correct him.Īnother thing that makes us wary of her shaky perspective is how she doesn’t register the crazy back-and-forth flow of time with respect to Jake’s parents. The fact that none of these names belong to her is shown by the fact that she gets a call from the people with those names but never picks it up. She is called by several variations of “Lucy” and she doesn’t mind that people keep mixing up her name. The fact that we never get to know her name is proof enough that the Girlfriend is an unreliable character. And pondering over his isolation and loneliness, he starts to wonder what would have happened had he asked for the number of the girl that he once saw at a trivia night. However, the turn of the events kept him in his small town and he felt reduced to living the life of a nobody. When he was young, he wasn’t popular or even friendly, but he was hard-working, “diligent”. Jake’s parents are long dead, he lives alone at his house, he works as a janitor, and often finds himself being mocked by the young girls at school. We wonder how he is connected to them and how his phone call works in this scenario.įollowing up on the several clues left behind in the film, we reach to the conclusion that the janitor is none other than Jake, and that the whole scenario with the Girlfriend is just a figment of his (Janitor/Jake’s) imagination. Running parallel to her and Jake’s visit to his parents’ house, we also see the story of the janitor. He keeps whispering something, which is repeated when the Girlfriend picks up the call. However, just when we are introduced to her, we also meet an old man by the window. We follow the events of ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ from the perspective of the Girlfriend. Things get really weird when they get to the house and she starts to notice some startling details. As the film progresses, we become privy to the thoughts of the unnamed woman and witness strange happenings through her perspective. ![]() They had only met a few weeks ago and this is their first long trip together. A woman is on her way with her boyfriend, Jake, to his parents’ house. ![]()
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