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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2229 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 29, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is the film I'm Thinking of Ending Things?

Yes, that is the film that I'm talking about in my post.

I'm glad it got you thinking about your life, but for me I thought it was a bit shallow and gimmicky.

On the other hand, Anomalisa by the same director, I couldn't stop thinking about for ages.

This sounds like a film I would watch and recommend and my wife would see as infuriatingly typical of what she sees as my depressing, dark taste in movies. In other words I now plan to watch it.

The funny thing is, it was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. He previously wrote and directed Anomalisa, a movie I loved and which I related to more than literally any other film (maybe any other work of fiction) I've ever seen in my life. He also wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which I've watched several times and loved every time, and Adaptation which, while not as powerful or thematically rich as the previous two, is just as clever, and absolutely hilarious.

So I was going into I'm Thinking of Ending Things with high expectations, which it utterly failed to meet. The weird parts of the three aforementioned films always had an in-story justification or were funny enough that you didn't care: here they seem like weird for the sake of weird. It's aiming for some kind of middle ground between surreal absurdist comedy (like Beckett) and straightforward psychological thriller (like Identity or Secret Window): it isn't funny enough for the former or unnerving enough for the latter. The man who once teased our brains with nested stories, obscure literary allusions and anachronic narrative now settles for the im14andthisisdeep territory of a title in which you initially think "ending things" means "dumping my boyfriend" but later realise it means "killing myself". Major disappointment from a man capable of far, far better. Cannot recommend.

That's disappointing. This is apparently adapted from a novel and not CK's original, if that explains anything. Edit: wrong letter

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