By Yang

I’m Thinking of Ending Things: A Trans Film?

How the film adaptation of I’m Thinking of Ending Things told a trans story — intentionally or not.

Charlie Kaufman’s 2020 film I’m Thinking of Ending Things can be a confusing watch, to say the least. I wouldn’t blame anyone for dismissing it as an overly pretentious art film, and this article is not meant to convince you otherwise. Rather, there was one thought in the back of my mind as I watched this film, and in it, I found perfect clarity.

The thought is simple: I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a transgender story.

The thought is not original. The only reason this film flew on my radar was due to a smattering of tweets that raised such an interpretation. Being a transgender man myself, I was intrigued. After my first viewing, I was convinced. Yet as I scoured the Internet, any further discussion or analysis of this subject escaped me. Most would agree it was a film about regrets as you age. Quite a few reviews pointed toward the original book, which I suppose is as reasonable an explanation as any.

Pride month will be over when this article is published, but in its honor I will attempt to present a transgender reading of this film to the best of my ability. Stories about the transgender experience are still sparse, and this film managed to resonate with me in a truly unsettling manner.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. What is I’m Thinking of Ending Things?

The original book by Ian Reid is a relatively straightforward thriller. The film, while following the same events of the book, still differs enough in the details that I won’t focus on the latter too much. However, a short introduction of the book is needed to understand why the film is laid out the way it is.

A young woman named Lucy is going to meet her boyfriend Jake’s parents for the first time, but she can’t shake one particular thought: that she needs to break up with him. She needs to end things — hence the title. The story unfolds over three locations: the drive to Jake’s parents’ house, then the house itself, and finally the drive back, where they stop at Jake’s high school.

Certain chapters end with snippets of another conversation, where the speakers are implied to be discussing a case of suicide. As details unfold, they paint a tragic picture — an elderly high school janitor, driven to despair by isolation, no true social ties in his life.

Here’s the kicker: None of this is real. All of the events in the book happen inside the Janitor’s head before he ends his life. Lucy is a girl who he met only once, and as he thinks of ending things, he attempts to envision a future for himself with someone by his side. Through Lucy’s perspective, what starts as a simple visit to her boyfriend’s parents becomes increasingly surreal. Time seems to warp and her memories blur. She recognizes herself in the details of Jake’s life, in Jake’s childhood home, and their life stories intertwine. Ultimately, when they arrive at the high school, the fantasy falls apart. Reality kicks in, the Janitor makes his choice, and he dies alone in a frozen car.

So it’s clear that this story is largely a cautionary tale about aging and regret, and reaching out to others before it is too late. So why do I and others consider it to be a trans story?

Ask yourself this: why do we see the story from Lucy’s perspective?

The real explanation is that Jake is fantasizing of being with Lucy. Yet I would like to raise an alternative interpretation: that the fantasy was of being Lucy.

Suddenly, the Janitor’s despair is all-too-familiar. When you’re trans and repressed, a certain dread begins to sink in. I struggle to find the proper words to express this feeling, this dark period of my life — but if there exists something that portrays it accurately, it is Kaufman’s cinematic version of I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

A Different Time

YOUNG WOMAN. Sorry. Getting old ain’t for sissies, as Bette Davis said.

JAKE. True. Although one might take issue with her use of the word sissy as a pejorative.

YOUNG WOMAN. Of course. Yes. A different time.

Kaufman’s film features a specifically queer throughline which isn’t present in the book, the first of which is described above. This exchange takes place during the drive to Jake’s parents’ house, where Jake talks about how his mother has been unwell in her old age. It is the first of many references to homophobia “back in the day.” Given that the Janitor is old in the present day, it’s easy to see why she never transitioned. Time simply wasn’t on her side.

Jake turns on the radio and the song Many a New Day from the musical Oklahoma! starts playing, a title which carries special significance in this movie. Lucy is unfamiliar with this song, and Jake expresses surprise that she doesn’t know about the play. When asked if he’s a fan of musicals, Jake says he isn’t, then contradictorily begins listing off a long list of musicals.

The relation between musicals and the queer community, while a well-trodden stereotype, still has a core of truth in it. And if that seems like a reach, the film then cuts directly to a scene of the old Janitor in high school, watching in the corner as a group of girls, all done up in hair and clothes and makeup, rehearse Many a New Day on stage. A vision of what could have been.

Right before they arrive at the parents’ house, there’s another cut to the Janitor. In the film, he watches as a boy and a girl, dressed as characters in Oklahoma!, dance in a locker room hallway to its music. In the script, however, there’s something shockingly overt.

Janitor cleans the bathroom sinks. There is a stage make-up book open to OLD AGE make-up techniques, some open make-up containers, and a white old lady wig.

Yeah, there really is no cisgender explanation for this.

The film then enters its next part — the meeting with Jake’s parents. You can instantly tell something is off when Jake’s parents don’t even acknowledge him when they finally meet. Instead, the focus is entirely on Lucy, almost as though she were the one coming home. This isn’t coming home with a girl — this is coming home as a girl.

This reading is further reinforced as, whenever Jake’s parents start asking Lucy about her studies or career, it is revealed that Jake also shares those interests. Lucy’s a painter — Jake likes painting too. Lucy’s studying quantum physics — so is Jake. The details themselves are inconsistent, always shifting, hinting that Lucy isn’t real and is instead a reflection of Jake’s own life, of what could have been.

Jake’s father also has interesting things to say about this. When Lucy says she is a painter, his response is to disparage abstract art in favor of realism. Jake is visibly ticked off, as though it’s a conversation he’s had many times before. When he hears she’s studying quantum physics, he remarks, “That’s unusual for a girl, isn’t it?” Call it a stretch, but it’s not hard to imagine a younger Jake’s interest in art being quashed and instead being pushed toward the more “proper, masculine” sciences.

The mother then asks about how they met, since she loves romantic meetings like in Forget Paris. The father interjects that “I didn’t like that movie. Billy Crystal is a nancy.” This is a very direct reference to how Billy Crystal (though not himself gay) played one of the first gay TV characters in Soap as Jodie Dallas.

The Jake-Lucy connection is strengthened over the following sequences. It is most direct when she enters his childhood bedroom alone. Her own paintings stare right back at her, and books and poetry collections referenced earlier are all present. There is a parallel theme of aging in this part as Jake’s parents seem to become older and younger from scene to scene, though it is not a theme that will be explored here. Eventually, the two of them leave the house, and the third act begins as Jake and Lucy leave the house and drive into a snowy night.

Jake brings up the movie A Woman Under The Influence, and Lucy launches into an uncharacteristically scathing critique of it. The exchange itself is layered, but I want to focus on how Jake justifies why he likes the movie, and the following line.

JAKE. I guess I was just taken in by the sympathy Cassavetes showed for her. I feel like maybe our society lacks a certain kindness, a willingness to take in the vulnerabilities and struggles of others… struggling with issues caused by…

YOUNG WOMAN. An alienating society?

[…]

JAKE. Everything? It’s like, feeling old, like, your body is going, your hearing, your sight. You can’t see and you’re invisible, and you made so many wrong turns. The lie of it all.

An “alienating society” reads as something all too familiar. Call it the patriarchy, call it cis-heteronormativity, whatever it is — the one suffocating force queer people have felt and continue to feel in the present. While Jake’s next line can be read as a lament about aging in general, it resonates as the despair of a repressing trans person. While “the lie of it all” contextually refers to empty positive platitudes such as “It’ll get better,” it strikes me as referring to the life of concealing one’s identity. Though it still works contextually — as many of us can testify, transitioning isn’t easy, and you lose hope that your life and appearance will ever be as they should be.

Lucy and Jake end up talking about how Freud was wrong — how mothers don’t really psychologically influence their children. Lucy pointedly says, “A person, an adult, has to, at some point, take responsibility for who they are, what they’ve become.” to which Jake agrees after a beat. It’s a small detail, but it reads like another jab at what Lucy-as-Jake didn’t do — never self-actualized, never became who she was meant to be.

Lucy then mentions how mothers were historically blamed for mental illnesses such as “schizophrenia, autism, narcissism, homosexuality.” Jake is quick to point out how homosexuality isn’t a mental illness, and then this speech follows.

JAKE. [Right.] It’s despicable how we label people, categorize them, dismiss them. I look at the kids I see at school every day. I see the ones who are ostracized. They’re different, out of step. I see the lives they’ll have because of it. Sometimes I see them years later, in town or at the supermarket. I can tell they still carry that stuff around with them. Like a black aura. A mill stone. An oozing wound.

Speaking from experience? Yeah.

The two stop by a Dairy Queen — renamed to Tulsey Town. Two high school girls are at the counter, identical in blonde hair and makeup. Lucy walks up to them, and Jake stands far behind, refusing to look at them.

What follows is probably one of the most vivid depictions of gender dysphoria put to film.

The girls ignore Lucy and look straight at Jake.

GIRL 1. Oh.

The two employees side-eye each other.

GIRL 2. (mockingly polite) Can we help you, sir?

It hurts.

The girls just smile and snicker before a third girl emerges from the back. She’s “small and haunted,” as the script describes. She has rashes on her arms. The rash is a trait shared with Jake and in turn the Janitor, which is another hint to the reader that everything is taking place in the Janitor’s mind. Lucy feels like she recognizes her, thinking, “I know this girl. I’ve seen her somewhere. I’ve seen her before. Her face. Her rash. I know her. […] She’s someone. She’s from somewhere. I’m certain of it.” Why is this so?

I’d like to take this connection one step further and posit that the young girl represents the Janitor’s younger self. In the previous scene where Jake talked about the pain of high school outcasts earlier, there’s a brief glimpse of a high school, focusing on an apprehensive girl standing by the side of a hallway as everyone else averts her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she looks like the Tulsey Town girl.

Perhaps this means that Lucy had dared to exist, if only for a fleeting moment. Maybe she didn’t even know what it meant to be trans then. But if this shot of the high school is meant to be a glimpse of the past — it didn’t turn out well. When they leave, Jake refuses to acknowledge her existence.

She’s worried. She knows something they don’t.

GIRL. You don’t have to go.

YOUNG WOMAN. I don’t have to go where?

GIRL. Forward. In time. You don’t have to. You can stay here.

(beat)

I’m very scared.

[…]

I’m scared for you.

The Final Act

JAKE. Everybody knows it. Even people who know nothing else about David Foster Wallace, have never read a word of his writing. Suicide becomes the story. The mythology. The cautionary tale. It’s obnoxious. Other people’s suffering turned into stories. […]

The final act of the film is where my interpretation comes to an end. What this section depicts clearly adheres to the original intentions of the book, and conveys the story of an old man who dreams of having been loved before his final moments. Nevertheless, it must be seen through.

Lucy finally meets the Janitor here, in person. They hug, and when she finally walks away, there is an uneasy sense of finality. This is where the fantasy finally ends.

The dream ballet from Oklahoma! features here. A man and a woman, resembling a younger Jake and Lucy, dance in the high school, and all is well. Yet as the two are to be wed, a third dancer, resembling a younger Janitor, intervenes and theatrically “kills” the dancing Jake. The snow from outdoors falls on his body as the real Lucy and Jake look over his corpse.

The real Janitor sweeps away the snow, and we see him getting ready to leave. He enters his pickup truck but doesn’t go anywhere. Hypothermia sets in.

A vision of an animated pig with maggots in its belly appears, guiding the Janitor away. We are shown another stage — an elderly Jake accepting an award. He performs A Lonely Room from Oklahoma!, a song about fantasizing about what you don’t have, and professes his love for an elderly Lucy in the crowd.

In the empty parking lot, sits the Janitor’s pick-up, a white truck-shaped lump of snow.

END.

If you want to understand why this story ends the way it does, you need to understand the Janitor’s despair. How did it start? Why did it end this way?

The Sense That Something Is Wrong

If you ask a group of trans people, “When did you realize you were trans?” you’ll certainly get a multitude of answers. Some have known with absolute certainty since childhood. Many knew they weren’t the right gender but lacked the language to express it. As for myself and others, we had no signs to go on other than a general sense of unease. This line from Morpheus in The Matrix, now known as a film directed by two trans sisters, describes it succinctly.

It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it?

As you might imagine, when you have nothing more than a sense that “something isn’t right,” it’s hard to believe that being trans is the answer. Even if you manage to accept this fact, a bigger, scarier question rears its head — what are you going to do about it? Morpheus continues,

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, we don’t get presented with a literal life-or-death situation. Not initially, anyway. It’s a question that lingers silently, haunting the back of your mind. Alternatively,

There’s only one question to resolve. I’m scared. I feel a little crazy. I’m not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

This quote is from a figure known as The Caller in the story, who has been calling Lucy at odd intervals, repeating only this monologue. He represents the Janitor’s thoughts and is one of many signs that Lucy’s reality is not as it seems. This line is also a striking representation of what that period of my life felt like.

Amidst chaos and uncertainty, time continues to march on. Time brings with it a slow, gradual acceptance. Now, you start to wonder — why didn’t you know sooner? Why now, of all times?

Which brings us to the second half of the opening monologue of the film.

I haven’t been thinking about it for long. The idea is new. But it feels old at the same time. When did it start? What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me, but planted in my mind, pre-developed. Is an unspoken idea unoriginal? Maybe I’ve actually known all along. Maybe this is how it was always going to end.

People tend to frame self-acceptance as a joyful thing. It can be. It can also feel a lot like resignation. That somehow, despite everything you thought you knew, all the expectations and assumptions you had, it was all only leading up to one final destination. Life has brought you to the edge of a precipice, and now it’s telling you to take a leap of faith.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Trans people are often prevented from transitioning, and I don’t think I need to elaborate on why. In my case, it was a mix of unaccepting parents (they got better) and a psychologist who insisted I couldn’t be prescribed hormones unless I had already socially transitioned first (I stopped seeing her).

And that was after I came out. Actually, I had never planned to come out. It all burst out one day during an uncomfortable conversation with my parents about my plans for the future. But I digress. I couldn’t take that leap of faith, even if I wanted to. If I jumped, I would fall. Every day I stood on the precipice, and the call of the void grew ever stronger.

Time, and with it death, pervades the narrative of this film. I have the privilege of being young, still far from facing down the end of my life. But there I was, standing at the boundary of transition, as time seemed to close in on me. My body had long since changed. My future was a closing door lying just out of reach. I was going to transition. I was going to stay closeted. I was going to end things right then and there.

Something, someone, had to give.

YOUNG WOMAN. I guess maybe I was thinking about time. […] How it’s in charge of us, like we’re on a train and it takes us where it takes us. There’s no veering off. No side trips. And like Mussolini’s trains; it runs on time.

[…]

JAKE. Anyway, you can always jump off a train, right?

We come back now to the very beginning of the film.

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks, it lingers, it dominates. There’s not much I can do about it, trust me. It doesn’t go away. It’s there whether I like it or not. It’s there when I eat, when I go to bed. It’s there when I sleep, when I wake up. It’s always there. Always.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things, then, is a cautionary tale of a trans woman who stayed repressed into old age and died by suicide in the end, dreaming of how things could have been. Watching this film at 17, closeted, it was as though I saw my future unfolding in front of me. It wasn’t comforting.

Those days are thankfully behind me now. Yet my knowledge of this film and what it meant to me remained. Unseen, unheard, unwitnessed. If I have succeeded in conveying what I saw then, perhaps I can finally put Lucy’s ghost to rest.

This article was brought to you by Yang of Sundry Scribes, a Malaysian writing collective. Interested? Our Discord is open to writers and readers alike.

Works Cited

Reid, Iain. I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Scout Press, 2020.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Directed by Charlie Kaufman, Likely Story, 2020. Netflix, www.netflix.com.

Riley, Jenelle. “Read Charlie Kaufman’s ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Script (Exclusive).” Variety, Variety, 28 Dec. 2020, variety.com/2020/film/awards/im-thining-of-ending-things-script-charlie-kaufman-1234866559/

The Matrix. Directed by Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L., Warner Bros., 1999.