Jake is naked because there is a symptom of hypothermia called "paradoxical undressing", where people who are essential freezing to death start to feel irrationally hot, and thus strip away their clothes. It's almost exclusively seen in lethal cases of hypothermia.
i see what you saying but i think it doesnt fit the narrative, the tone of the movie. I say this because even though the characters talk about the scientific stuf sometimes, that espectific moment feels very metaphysical. My interpretation of it is that getting naked represents that he embraced the depression of an unfulfilled life, without actualizing his full potencial, accepting what it is instead of what could had been. Letting go of the burden that is life and embrace peace in the same way he got into this world, naked has baby ( wich is the opposite of letting go. Because when people are babies they have all the unfilted potencial for what it can be/become, a entire life ahead of them).
@@bradastra6111 I guess it can be seen either way but if he was to get naked from hypothermia it would make sense. A lot of the movie are imagined things that are based from a reality of this mans life, so to imagine the reality being him freezing to death naked in his car and him imaging the rest would line up with the rest of whats taken place. But I dont feel there should be a right or wrong answer.
when i watched the movie with my brother we didn't know what the story was about at all, and throughout the movie we saw many things that could be a metaphor to alzheimer's disease, like the aging of his parents, the fact that lucy's name and profession changes, everything seemed very similar to someone gradually losing their memories. We were so certain that it was about it that we found out that people who have alzheimer's tend to remember music for a long time after they forgot even their families, and that fitted SO MUCH with the ending, so i like to think that can be also a metaphor to it, thanks for coming at my ted talk
I lik when people decide to make uo their own ideas for what a given film is about even when the author has given their own interpretation of the work. Tbh i feel its amazing when any medium can get people into thinking up their own interpretations ans ideas for how a given story could be perceived their their life lense. Its a cycle of creativity that makes both being a creator and consumer worth it tbh. I did the same in creating my own interpretation of the film, with it being about a girl made up in the main guys head and slowing throughout the film becaming her own person (becoming conscious) and someone who rejects the main character before leaving him and therefore making herself nonexistent until the cycle begins again with the main guy reimagining another woman who will do the same until he ends it all and the cycle stops. Great interpretation btw lov it
thats the same way i interpereted it! i had a suspicion it was about suicide as well, and by the end i was able to piece together the fact that jake was the janitor, but its interesting that the story can fit with both interpretations
Alright time to make use of the four years I did theater in high school, 1) the dance the stand-ins for “Lucy” and the idealized/old Jake perform is actually the Dream Ballet from Oklahoma, with the younger Jake taking the part of Curley ( the show’s hero) and older Jake taking the part of Judd (the show’s villain). 2) Jake’s self-association with Judd continues when he sings his solo number “Lonely Room” at the award ceremony (interestingly enough, that song comes immediately after “Pore Jud Is Daid” which is a mock eulogy for the character, maybe Jake accepting his fate?) 3) Jake’s mom is on stage and dressed as Auntie Eller, another character from Oklahoma in the award scene. I have no idea why she has a role in the “show” when no one else does, but I thought it was interesting.
Also check out the monologue from the girl doing oklahoma in the school, I think its the same as what ws playing on the radio in the beginning in the janitors truck. He glossed over a lot of little things
Good enough! I didn't know the dance was from the play. Had heard that the song at the end is the villain's song, which definitely helps with the interpretation. Doesn't Judd also kill himself, or did I make that up? What do you think it means?
@@davidbjacobs3598 (I might be reading too much into things here but oh well) Judd, who spends the whole show lamenting his loneliness and wishing he could be with Laurey, dies when he accidentally stabs himself while trying to kill Curly after Curly & Laurey's wedding. In the film after the wedding portion of the dance sequence, the janitor stabs young Jake. Considering the fact that the janitor and Jake are one in the same, this could be a reference to Judd stabbing himself. However, it's more likely that it's just a continuation of the allusion to the Dream Ballet because during the Dream Ballet, Judd kills Curly after there's been a dream wedding sequence. Maybe it's a reference to both Judd's actual death as well as Curly's dream death. Either way, I feel like it maybe helps strengthen the correlation between the janitor/Jake and the character of Judd.
Now Im no fancy film student, but this movie deeply affected me for months after my first viewing. Granted, I was expecting something closer to Eternal Sunshine bc I'm a basic bitch and that's the only Kaufman film I was familiar with lol. What I got instead, however, was a horrifying, existential nightmare that captured my feelings of isolation and self deprication that I've had all year, which I was not expecting. It has begun haunting me once more, with all the new falling snow and cold weather. From a narrative and technical stand point, it's an impressive film and probably one of the best movies to come out this year on Netflix. It's definitely worth a watch, especially now with the cold winter season approaching.
11:32 YMS had a good explanation on why he is naked. Jake is suffering from hypothermia which if you recall he was thinking about how painful it would be to kill himself in that way. When the body experiences hypothermia to such an extreme it causes the body to get hot so Jakes takes off all his clothes because he is too hot. Also hypothermia can cause hallucinations. By the way that scene where he accepts an award was an ode to a beautiful mind.
i saw some people criticising the predictabilty of the janitor jake thing but that's kind of intentional to me? like, this ending is inevitable, this man's life is inevitable, our decisions are determined, no one has a choice of their environment (family, weather, mental health, etc.) that dictate our actions. (a bit unrelated but i loved the pig thing!!!)
i know i'm a little bit late BUT, when i first watched it, i interpreted it as being a movie about loss of identity in a relationship. i had just broken up with my partner at the time, and i think that that heavily influenced my understanding of i'm thinking of ending things. as i understood it, it not only was about losing your sense of self, but also about how we inevitably and sometimes irreparably change, when we open ourselves to the outside world, how it shapes us and alters us, and how romantic relationships can turn us into completely different people, make us forget about who we were and what we were like
I've watched this movie several times and Im pretty sure Jake decides to kill himself when Lucy hands him the slippers. He says he "sees her". Finally recognizing his desire to truly end things. Then we have the beautiful interpretative dance sequence where its pretty evident Kauffman wanted to represent the very part in the book where the Janitor chases Lucy, in a pervy way may I add. He chose to also add the dancer-Jake persona getting stabbed and killed by the dancer Janitor persona, solidifying that the fantasy is dead. The true Jake, the janitor, then cleans everything up, finishes cleaning up the school, gets dressed, calmly sits in his truck and just... Waits. This is even forshadowed when Lucy says that hypothermia is not such a bad way to die, if she has to, when she is alone in fantasy-Jake's car, after he went into the school. Theres quick, but clear transition shots between him letting the car keys go, and starting to undress, that show the car getting progressively more and more covered in snow. As he's fully naked and the final stages of hypothermia have set in, he starts hallucinating. First the Tullsey Town thing, whatever that is, then the pig monologue scene, witch turn into the nobel prize-Oklahoma extravaganza freudian fest that is the end of the movie. The final shot is the truck, completely covered in snow... So yea, he dead... Its a nice movie tho, I prefer Being John Malkovich tho
I've watched a bunch of Charlie Kaufman interviews and he's mentioned that he chose to adapt something because he's been having trouble getting things made since Synecdoche, New York.
Kaufman didn't pick the book because he thought you'd be impressed that he's heard of the most famous Musicals of all time. That's a crazy and baseless accusation. He picked the book because he's interested in exploring its themes (in many cases, a continued exploration). There are numerous ways in which he was the right filmmaker to translate those themes to the film medium. Both adhering to, and altering the source text, would likely have presented itself as an immensely rewarding creative challenge. He substituted the scientific conversations in the book with pop culture ones, for many reasons (meta commentary, narrative cohesion, a greater familiarity with those concepts, etc). There's simply nothing to suggest that Kaufman wants you to admire him for the fact that the characters in the book are aware of mainstream culture. He may use the Jake character to reflect on and even criticise himself, but no more than anyone who's read the book or watched the film will. You can't help but interpret a character without interpreting yourself, and if you're doing that from an artistic standpoint, some of that reflection is gonna end up in the finished work. To say that this autobiographical inclination, or worse still, some attempt at impressing people with the breath of his entertainment knowledge, was the sole, or even primary motivating factor in his selecting the book for adaptation, is almost to say that all of the great, challenging, and masterful work he did in the project, was in workmanlike servitude to just getting the opportunity to do that one thing.
"He substituted the scientific conversations in the book with pop culture ones, for many reasons (meta commentary, narrative cohesion, a greater familiarity with those concepts, etc)." To me the clearest reason is that Kaufman, as an artist/ filmmaker himself, wanted to comment on the role media serves in shaping us - who we are, how we interpret the world, and our expectations for life. Jake imagines himself as both the hero and villain of Oklahoma. He imagines that he'd meet Lucy the same way that the characters in that fake Robert Z. movie met. He imagines that finally receiving recognition after a lifetime of inner turmoil would look like it did for John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.
I think you explain the book and film really well. They are definitely not conventional stories, so managing to get both texts across clearly and concisely is something to be praised. Great video and insights, your stuff is consistently really good.
This was my read when I watched it with my friend. We thought with the aging themes, it just made sense that it was Lucy looking back on her life as she slowly lost track of her memories bc of dementia. But the ending confused everything, so we just assumed we were right about the theme but it was actually just Jake looking back on things losing his mind. We were mostly confused about the Dairy Queen scene. I thought it was Jake, as the janitor, who, when younger and having trouble with women ended up assaulted these girls. The school was representative of his mind as he, the janitor, goes through cleaning up every corner for nobody but himself. He cleans up everything else but he won't empty a trash can full of Dairy Queen cups? That's his guilt.
Dude I really love your content, you and Lindsay Ellis are some of my absolute favorite video essay channels keeping me from going crazy this hectic semester! Keep up the amazing work!
Reading the book is heavily recommended. It’s really short (I read it in one sitting over the course of 5 hours or so) and it provides an interesting perspective on the dynamics of the story. Also, I’m pretty sure Jake getting naked is him experiencing hypothermia in the truck. The final shot of the snow covered truck in the parking lot confirmed that for me.
good video, as a kaufman fan I can agree that his films can too much, that's why I rarely ever recommend his films. I liked this film a lot, I related to Jake with the entire maladaptive daydreaming thing and I think kaufman 's vibe suited this topic, I have yet to read the book though.
Even though I liked it, I'm probably never watching this movie in one sitting again cause of the pacing. It reminded me a bit of Mandy in that regard, the onscreen action felt like it was interesting/emotionally engaging but the slowness of it all made it difficult to care about it large swathes of it all. I'm certain it's by design but still
It always fascinates me to see just how much silent vitriol Taylor speaks with when criticizing attempts at meta commentary, yet as he points out, this very channel is a form of his own desire to create work which approaches meta commentary and engages those questions. When one engages with media extensively enough that fiction no longer distracts them from objective understanding that they are consuming a product, meta becomes the only topic they really want to discuss.
Dude I was hoping you’d review this. As soon as I watched it I knew that it would be perfect content for your channel. I’ve watched a lot of reviews of this film and this is definitely the most thorough and thought provoking. Nice work.
I’m gonna say I watched this twice once sober and once absolutely baked and say what you want but I had a much better time watching it while I was high 😂 I will also say all in all I thought it was weird and interesting once I learned the story and I always like when my name is in something
Reading the book blind freaked the fuck out of me. The ending scene of Jake's girlfriend's (our narrator) body literally fall to pieces as she crawls in the hallway before she decapitates herself with wire in the janitor's closet messed me up because of how attached to her I became and the stomach churning descriptions.
I've watched this movie last week without knowing anything about it, I didn't even know it was adapted from a book until after watching it. I immediately picked up that the Janitor and Jake were the same person, as the clues there were super strong, but on first watch I thought the whole thing was a story about dementia. I've seen a few other people pick up on this, too. In a way, all the clues to the fact that the young woman is not a real character (the inconsistent backstory, the skips through time etc) fit quite well in that reading, too. Suffice to say I was quite confused throughout! But in a good way, I love a movie that raises a lot of questions, and I thought the performances and cinematography were great in this. I even loved the ballet sequence, which I know a lot of people hated. Maybe that comes from being a former dancer, idk. I thought it fit really well.
i had never heard of the book, and googled it out of interest after i watched the film. learning the canonical interpretation ruined many of the themes i had gleaned from the film, which centered on lucy's struggle to escape Jake's need to define her in relation to his needs. her being essentially imaginary and literally defined by him was a kick in the teeth, and on my second watch, the film felt like a masturbatory quest to demonstrate that doing the manic pixie dream girl is acceptable after all. but i enjoyed this video thank you!
Although it may not have been the intent of the film, I think it also did a good job at representing an abusive relationship- the way the girlfriend's identity is changed and subsumed by Jake's, the way he crafts her into his perfect girlfriend, the way Jake is controlling- he forces his way many times, the way she can't seem to leave him, etc- honestly, I've had abusive relationships in the past and the interaction between Jake and his girlfriend mirrored them to a frightening degree.
I just watched your WandaVision video because, despite my desperate search for intelligent cinema content, YT is showing me WV content. Instead of leaving a comment there, I searched out a more attractive item to promote to the algorithm. Glad I found your stuff. Thanks for keeping on.
15:20"...a cruciverbalist, someone who specialises in words..." Um, a cruciverbalist is someone who makes or does crosswords (from Latin, 'crux', cross and 'verbum', word) - how's that for pedantic? (o;
I haven't watched the movie at all but it was explained to me by someone else so we didn't go look up anything about the odd movie instead we thought it was multidimensional head swapping between the different ages of the characters like Jake and a combo of those multi dimensions crossing over like the teen play mom was the same as the Derry queen injured girl which were the mom's dreams & former selves reappearing into the world if characters crossed paths because those we followed were of one dimension only and didn't know about the others popping into and out of their word we were locked into their world. at points like the janitor watching them we theorized it was some cross over sight jacking effect as they were all connected through the dimensions by being alive and unknowingly moving between the dimensions w/o realizing it in brief episodes. The themes we identified was marriage from a woman's pov as it ends her dreams of her life and in order to gain some sort of immortality she either gave up her thesis paper to Jake so through him she would be immoral even if her credit was not given or else he killed her at some point in one universe that was revealed to her in another universe and only in one universe does she leave Jake we had like 8 versions or so of her shifting through the dimensions and her fates. We also identified mental illness but also ageing as themes and how but it's alot to recount. But your explanation is way more easier then what we came up with a bit disappointing as the thought exercise was really interesting to us but we figured the real thing wouldn't be so grand of scope.
I am so surprised that you are a film student. I can barely contain my surprise, in fact, and I’m totally being serious when I say that. Wow. I would never have guessed...... But hey, I like your unapologetically pseudo-intellectual speech and dry delivery. So, keep on keeping on, young artiste 👨🎨
abdur razzaq EXACTLY! That’s what made it so disappointing to me. You don’t get the satisfaction at the end of figuring out that the girlfriend isn’t real.
@@william2415 I have to disagree, the book is great but some of the changes made for the film were better. The poetic ending to the film is much more satisfying than the out of place gore angle of the book. Plus Charlie Kaufman throws in a ton of themes and motifs (that he is known for) that the book didn't have. IDK, its a great book but IMO Charlie Kaufman really fleshed everything out and made it more naunced.
Dragon Mountain Fanboy I see what you mean, however, in my personal opinion, a book adaptation is best served if all aspects of the source material are used. When a director starts to make changes, it no longer is the work they are adapting and instead becomes their own. I just don’t like adaptations that take liberties with the source material is all.
He was naked because he was experiencing hypothermia. Jake froze to death in his truck. For whatever reason people start stripping when they experience hypothermia.
My own interpretation is that the janitor was maladaptive daydreaming; as the story changes when the janitor views movies. I think he tries to live through his youth in his mind.
this feels like fake honey, it sticks but it doesn't taste and that's because there's other 10 writtings that involves Kafkaesque lifestyle and you observe random statements that implements a scar in a world of patches. "The Penultimate" for me could and is one of those rare film, a triple budget is Blade Runner 2049. Kafka is everywhere but not everyone can be absorbed by his superficial world view.
Hypothermia often causes people to rip off their clothes because they feel incredibly hot even though they're actually freezing. You... missed a lot of details here. Like the "Broadway standards" actually being the cheesiest Broadway musicals that are almost exclusively produced by highschool theatre programs... Thus exposing a lack of depth in Jakes understanding of musical theatre. He only knows what the local HS puts on.
Definitely a good point and a layer of the film I may not have pointed out, but I’ll raise you: knowledge of what’s passé within Broadway standards is still knowledge, arguably at an even higher level, that Kaufman is flexing whether intentionally or not, just by virtue of the film’s meta-presentation. I will admit though I didn’t know about paradoxical undressing until after I made the video.
i really hated the movie, ngl. I'm not a fan of stupidly dense pretentious stuff and was really unhappy to have to sit thru what felt like someone's first attempt at lengthening a student film. the trailer was interesting and i am a fan of weird things, but the whole "spending 20+ minutes in a car talking nonsense in the most awkward way possible" made me decide to end things. wound up watching The Platform (2019) instead (hard to watch but a far better movie imo). glad that you could explain what the heck was happening in this movie, though!
I actually hated this film. It provoked in me a strong desire to turn it off every scene or two and it was genuinely miserable to get through. (And I like his other films.). Not a fan of creative works that rely too much on intertextuality. I felt this script demanding I pause to go watch Oklahoma or A Woman Under the Influence in order to fully understand it. It seemed to constantly drift into the surreal for the sake of surrealism, choosing to confuse rather than elevate the underlying story. I couldn't figure out for the longest time if the janitor was a future version after these events had played out or if he was just making everything up in fantasy. It seemed so far up it's own arse when it didn't have to be.
Honestly, I like your videos man, I’ve been subbed for a while. But one thing about review is really annoying me. Why are you so upset about Kaufman changing the books he adapts to be his own? The way I see it, that’s what any good artist does. If you want the experience that the book gives you, then read the book. Why watch the movie? Stanley Kubrick made an entire career based off of changing people’s books to match his own vision. I just don’t understand why this is a thing that annoys people. And both Susan Orlean (the author of The Orchid Thief) and Iain Reid (the author of Im Thinking of Ending Things) like Kaufman, and respect the ways he changed their novels. I just don’t think it’s your place to get offended for them, and act like Charlie Kaufman is some control obsessed asshole who intentionally restricts the voices of the people around him. Other than that, good review. But god that annoys me so much.
Maybe I wasn’t coming across entirely as I intended; I think it’s great that Kaufman makes these stories his own and takes a thematic approach to adaptation, I’m just trying to explore the implications of the process on the concept of ownership of art, which itself is a very complicated topic and has a few schools of thought. And when I call Kaufman pedantic or ironically refer to him as a “man of his own ideas,” it’s meant more endearingly than it maybe comes off. He’s a genius and I think very few writers are able to conceive stories and concepts on as holistic and micro a level as he does, and I’m sure there’s no one Orlean or Reid would have rather had adapt their books. I appreciate the comment though, and thanks for the support over the years!
Jake is naked because there is a symptom of hypothermia called "paradoxical undressing", where people who are essential freezing to death start to feel irrationally hot, and thus strip away their clothes. It's almost exclusively seen in lethal cases of hypothermia.
Yeah. As he was attempting suicide in his car by freezing to death.
This^
i see what you saying but i think it doesnt fit the narrative, the tone of the movie. I say this because even though the characters talk about the scientific stuf sometimes, that espectific moment feels very metaphysical. My interpretation of it is that getting naked represents that he embraced the depression of an unfulfilled life, without actualizing his full potencial, accepting what it is instead of what could had been. Letting go of the burden that is life and embrace peace in the same way he got into this world, naked has baby ( wich is the opposite of letting go. Because when people are babies they have all the unfilted potencial for what it can be/become, a entire life ahead of them).
@@bradastra6111 I guess it can be seen either way but if he was to get naked from hypothermia it would make sense. A lot of the movie are imagined things that are based from a reality of this mans life, so to imagine the reality being him freezing to death naked in his car and him imaging the rest would line up with the rest of whats taken place. But I dont feel there should be a right or wrong answer.
@@JD-gf7ur yup true I was just saying my interpretation xD
when i watched the movie with my brother we didn't know what the story was about at all, and throughout the movie we saw many things that could be a metaphor to alzheimer's disease, like the aging of his parents, the fact that lucy's name and profession changes, everything seemed very similar to someone gradually losing their memories. We were so certain that it was about it that we found out that people who have alzheimer's tend to remember music for a long time after they forgot even their families, and that fitted SO MUCH with the ending, so i like to think that can be also a metaphor to it, thanks for coming at my ted talk
I lik when people decide to make uo their own ideas for what a given film is about even when the author has given their own interpretation of the work. Tbh i feel its amazing when any medium can get people into thinking up their own interpretations ans ideas for how a given story could be perceived their their life lense. Its a cycle of creativity that makes both being a creator and consumer worth it tbh. I did the same in creating my own interpretation of the film, with it being about a girl made up in the main guys head and slowing throughout the film becaming her own person (becoming conscious) and someone who rejects the main character before leaving him and therefore making herself nonexistent until the cycle begins again with the main guy reimagining another woman who will do the same until he ends it all and the cycle stops. Great interpretation btw lov it
thats the same way i interpereted it! i had a suspicion it was about suicide as well, and by the end i was able to piece together the fact that jake was the janitor, but its interesting that the story can fit with both interpretations
Awesome interpretation :o
also taylor please do a video on luca guadagnino’s new show thank u
Alright time to make use of the four years I did theater in high school,
1) the dance the stand-ins for “Lucy” and the idealized/old Jake perform is actually the Dream Ballet from Oklahoma, with the younger Jake taking the part of Curley ( the show’s hero) and older Jake taking the part of Judd (the show’s villain).
2) Jake’s self-association with Judd continues when he sings his solo number “Lonely Room” at the award ceremony (interestingly enough, that song comes immediately after “Pore Jud Is Daid” which is a mock eulogy for the character, maybe Jake accepting his fate?)
3) Jake’s mom is on stage and dressed as Auntie Eller, another character from Oklahoma in the award scene. I have no idea why she has a role in the “show” when no one else does, but I thought it was interesting.
Also check out the monologue from the girl doing oklahoma in the school, I think its the same as what ws playing on the radio in the beginning in the janitors truck. He glossed over a lot of little things
Good enough! I didn't know the dance was from the play. Had heard that the song at the end is the villain's song, which definitely helps with the interpretation. Doesn't Judd also kill himself, or did I make that up? What do you think it means?
@@davidbjacobs3598 (I might be reading too much into things here but oh well) Judd, who spends the whole show lamenting his loneliness and wishing he could be with Laurey, dies when he accidentally stabs himself while trying to kill Curly after Curly & Laurey's wedding. In the film after the wedding portion of the dance sequence, the janitor stabs young Jake. Considering the fact that the janitor and Jake are one in the same, this could be a reference to Judd stabbing himself.
However, it's more likely that it's just a continuation of the allusion to the Dream Ballet because during the Dream Ballet, Judd kills Curly after there's been a dream wedding sequence. Maybe it's a reference to both Judd's actual death as well as Curly's dream death. Either way, I feel like it maybe helps strengthen the correlation between the janitor/Jake and the character of Judd.
Now Im no fancy film student, but this movie deeply affected me for months after my first viewing. Granted, I was expecting something closer to Eternal Sunshine bc I'm a basic bitch and that's the only Kaufman film I was familiar with lol. What I got instead, however, was a horrifying, existential nightmare that captured my feelings of isolation and self deprication that I've had all year, which I was not expecting. It has begun haunting me once more, with all the new falling snow and cold weather.
From a narrative and technical stand point, it's an impressive film and probably one of the best movies to come out this year on Netflix. It's definitely worth a watch, especially now with the cold winter season approaching.
I was expecting the same thing lol. It’s slowly becoming my favorite movie
11:32 YMS had a good explanation on why he is naked. Jake is suffering from hypothermia which if you recall he was thinking about how painful it would be to kill himself in that way. When the body experiences hypothermia to such an extreme it causes the body to get hot so Jakes takes off all his clothes because he is too hot. Also hypothermia can cause hallucinations. By the way that scene where he accepts an award was an ode to a beautiful mind.
only Taylor can make me watch video essays on series/movies I’ve never watched
is that a freaking bounce dryer sheet box as a mic stand
Do what ya can with what ya have where ya are.
i saw some people criticising the predictabilty of the janitor jake thing but that's kind of intentional to me? like, this ending is inevitable, this man's life is inevitable, our decisions are determined, no one has a choice of their environment (family, weather, mental health, etc.) that dictate our actions. (a bit unrelated but i loved the pig thing!!!)
i know i'm a little bit late BUT, when i first watched it, i interpreted it as being a movie about loss of identity in a relationship. i had just broken up with my partner at the time, and i think that that heavily influenced my understanding of i'm thinking of ending things.
as i understood it, it not only was about losing your sense of self, but also about how we inevitably and sometimes irreparably change, when we open ourselves to the outside world, how it shapes us and alters us, and how romantic relationships can turn us into completely different people, make us forget about who we were and what we were like
I've watched this movie several times and Im pretty sure Jake decides to kill himself when Lucy hands him the slippers. He says he "sees her". Finally recognizing his desire to truly end things. Then we have the beautiful interpretative dance sequence where its pretty evident Kauffman wanted to represent the very part in the book where the Janitor chases Lucy, in a pervy way may I add. He chose to also add the dancer-Jake persona getting stabbed and killed by the dancer Janitor persona, solidifying that the fantasy is dead. The true Jake, the janitor, then cleans everything up, finishes cleaning up the school, gets dressed, calmly sits in his truck and just... Waits. This is even forshadowed when Lucy says that hypothermia is not such a bad way to die, if she has to, when she is alone in fantasy-Jake's car, after he went into the school. Theres quick, but clear transition shots between him letting the car keys go, and starting to undress, that show the car getting progressively more and more covered in snow. As he's fully naked and the final stages of hypothermia have set in, he starts hallucinating. First the Tullsey Town thing, whatever that is, then the pig monologue scene, witch turn into the nobel prize-Oklahoma extravaganza freudian fest that is the end of the movie. The final shot is the truck, completely covered in snow... So yea, he dead... Its a nice movie tho, I prefer Being John Malkovich tho
“I gave Adapation 4-stars on Letterboxd, and my comments look like a book of David Foster Wallace essays"
I've watched a bunch of Charlie Kaufman interviews and he's mentioned that he chose to adapt something because he's been having trouble getting things made since Synecdoche, New York.
Kaufman didn't pick the book because he thought you'd be impressed that he's heard of the most famous Musicals of all time. That's a crazy and baseless accusation.
He picked the book because he's interested in exploring its themes (in many cases, a continued exploration). There are numerous ways in which he was the right filmmaker to translate those themes to the film medium. Both adhering to, and altering the source text, would likely have presented itself as an immensely rewarding creative challenge.
He substituted the scientific conversations in the book with pop culture ones, for many reasons (meta commentary, narrative cohesion, a greater familiarity with those concepts, etc). There's simply nothing to suggest that Kaufman wants you to admire him for the fact that the characters in the book are aware of mainstream culture.
He may use the Jake character to reflect on and even criticise himself, but no more than anyone who's read the book or watched the film will. You can't help but interpret a character without interpreting yourself, and if you're doing that from an artistic standpoint, some of that reflection is gonna end up in the finished work.
To say that this autobiographical inclination, or worse still, some attempt at impressing people with the breath of his entertainment knowledge, was the sole, or even primary motivating factor in his selecting the book for adaptation, is almost to say that all of the great, challenging, and masterful work he did in the project, was in workmanlike servitude to just getting the opportunity to do that one thing.
"He substituted the scientific conversations in the book with pop culture ones, for many reasons (meta commentary, narrative cohesion, a greater familiarity with those concepts, etc)."
To me the clearest reason is that Kaufman, as an artist/ filmmaker himself, wanted to comment on the role media serves in shaping us - who we are, how we interpret the world, and our expectations for life. Jake imagines himself as both the hero and villain of Oklahoma. He imagines that he'd meet Lucy the same way that the characters in that fake Robert Z. movie met. He imagines that finally receiving recognition after a lifetime of inner turmoil would look like it did for John Nash in A Beautiful Mind.
I think you explain the book and film really well. They are definitely not conventional stories, so managing to get both texts across clearly and concisely is something to be praised. Great video and insights, your stuff is consistently really good.
This was my read when I watched it with my friend. We thought with the aging themes, it just made sense that it was Lucy looking back on her life as she slowly lost track of her memories bc of dementia. But the ending confused everything, so we just assumed we were right about the theme but it was actually just Jake looking back on things losing his mind.
We were mostly confused about the Dairy Queen scene. I thought it was Jake, as the janitor, who, when younger and having trouble with women ended up assaulted these girls. The school was representative of his mind as he, the janitor, goes through cleaning up every corner for nobody but himself. He cleans up everything else but he won't empty a trash can full of Dairy Queen cups? That's his guilt.
Dude I really love your content, you and Lindsay Ellis are some of my absolute favorite video essay channels keeping me from going crazy this hectic semester! Keep up the amazing work!
Reading the book is heavily recommended. It’s really short (I read it in one sitting over the course of 5 hours or so) and it provides an interesting perspective on the dynamics of the story.
Also, I’m pretty sure Jake getting naked is him experiencing hypothermia in the truck. The final shot of the snow covered truck in the parking lot confirmed that for me.
That glass of water slightly moving between shots is almost a hate crime against people with OCD.
You just had to throw in some 13 Reasons Why in there, didn’t ya?
I learn a new word each time I watch your videos
good video, as a kaufman fan I can agree that his films can too much, that's why I rarely ever recommend his films. I liked this film a lot, I related to Jake with the entire maladaptive daydreaming thing and I think kaufman 's vibe suited this topic, I have yet to read the book though.
Even though I liked it, I'm probably never watching this movie in one sitting again cause of the pacing. It reminded me a bit of Mandy in that regard, the onscreen action felt like it was interesting/emotionally engaging but the slowness of it all made it difficult to care about it large swathes of it all.
I'm certain it's by design but still
It always fascinates me to see just how much silent vitriol Taylor speaks with when criticizing attempts at meta commentary, yet as he points out, this very channel is a form of his own desire to create work which approaches meta commentary and engages those questions. When one engages with media extensively enough that fiction no longer distracts them from objective understanding that they are consuming a product, meta becomes the only topic they really want to discuss.
Did you read Antkind? It's Kaufman taking the concept of pedantry and stretching it out for 700 pages. Can highly recommend
Never clicked so fast on a video
Dude I was hoping you’d review this. As soon as I watched it I knew that it would be perfect content for your channel. I’ve watched a lot of reviews of this film and this is definitely the most thorough and thought provoking. Nice work.
is that the little red book on your shelf? nice ✊
"The Memory Police" sounds like "Time Cop" for smart people. Lol
Was hoping you'd comment on the ending. The ending scene is the same as the ending scene of A Beautiful Mind.
Yes! And the dvd is seen in the beginning of the movie
the ending of i’m thinking of ending things always reminded me of synecdoche, new york. young people playing old people, like in synecdoche
congrats on 50 videos! Couldn't be happier that you decided to dissect this movie!
The book ICE by Anna Kavan is referenced in the movie and is very crucial for the larger idea of the novel
I like your hair a lot, Taylor.
I’m gonna say I watched this twice once sober and once absolutely baked and say what you want but I had a much better time watching it while I was high 😂 I will also say all in all I thought it was weird and interesting once I learned the story and I always like when my name is in something
Reading the book blind freaked the fuck out of me. The ending scene of Jake's girlfriend's (our narrator) body literally fall to pieces as she crawls in the hallway before she decapitates herself with wire in the janitor's closet messed me up because of how attached to her I became and the stomach churning descriptions.
I've watched this movie last week without knowing anything about it, I didn't even know it was adapted from a book until after watching it. I immediately picked up that the Janitor and Jake were the same person, as the clues there were super strong, but on first watch I thought the whole thing was a story about dementia. I've seen a few other people pick up on this, too. In a way, all the clues to the fact that the young woman is not a real character (the inconsistent backstory, the skips through time etc) fit quite well in that reading, too. Suffice to say I was quite confused throughout! But in a good way, I love a movie that raises a lot of questions, and I thought the performances and cinematography were great in this. I even loved the ballet sequence, which I know a lot of people hated. Maybe that comes from being a former dancer, idk. I thought it fit really well.
i had never heard of the book, and googled it out of interest after i watched the film. learning the canonical interpretation ruined many of the themes i had gleaned from the film, which centered on lucy's struggle to escape Jake's need to define her in relation to his needs. her being essentially imaginary and literally defined by him was a kick in the teeth, and on my second watch, the film felt like a masturbatory quest to demonstrate that doing the manic pixie dream girl is acceptable after all. but i enjoyed this video thank you!
I had the EXACT same feeling, learning the meaning of all of this kind of ruined it for me sadly
this movie was so confusing I needed this
Gotchu pal
Although it may not have been the intent of the film, I think it also did a good job at representing an abusive relationship- the way the girlfriend's identity is changed and subsumed by Jake's, the way he crafts her into his perfect girlfriend, the way Jake is controlling- he forces his way many times, the way she can't seem to leave him, etc- honestly, I've had abusive relationships in the past and the interaction between Jake and his girlfriend mirrored them to a frightening degree.
Loved this. It made me really want to see 'Adaptation'!
Adaptation is about Adaptation?
i like using big words because there is less space for misinterpretation, i know every hates it, but my grandma says i sound smart 😤
I just watched your WandaVision video because, despite my desperate search for intelligent cinema content, YT is showing me WV content. Instead of leaving a comment there, I searched out a more attractive item to promote to the algorithm. Glad I found your stuff. Thanks for keeping on.
15:20"...a cruciverbalist, someone who specialises in words..." Um, a cruciverbalist is someone who makes or does crosswords (from Latin, 'crux', cross and 'verbum', word) - how's that for pedantic? (o;
I haven't watched the movie at all but it was explained to me by someone else so we didn't go look up anything about the odd movie instead we thought it was multidimensional head swapping between the different ages of the characters like Jake and a combo of those multi dimensions crossing over like the teen play mom was the same as the Derry queen injured girl which were the mom's dreams & former selves reappearing into the world if characters crossed paths because those we followed were of one dimension only and didn't know about the others popping into and out of their word we were locked into their world. at points like the janitor watching them we theorized it was some cross over sight jacking effect as they were all connected through the dimensions by being alive and unknowingly moving between the dimensions w/o realizing it in brief episodes. The themes we identified was marriage from a woman's pov as it ends her dreams of her life and in order to gain some sort of immortality she either gave up her thesis paper to Jake so through him she would be immoral even if her credit was not given or else he killed her at some point in one universe that was revealed to her in another universe and only in one universe does she leave Jake we had like 8 versions or so of her shifting through the dimensions and her fates. We also identified mental illness but also ageing as themes and how but it's alot to recount. But your explanation is way more easier then what we came up with a bit disappointing as the thought exercise was really interesting to us but we figured the real thing wouldn't be so grand of scope.
Omg Taylor posted
I am so surprised that you are a film student. I can barely contain my surprise, in fact, and I’m totally being serious when I say that. Wow. I would never have guessed......
But hey, I like your unapologetically pseudo-intellectual speech and dry delivery. So, keep on keeping on, young artiste 👨🎨
Holy shit I loved the memory police I can’t believe that one day I might see a film adaptation of it
I loved the book. I was, however, too dumb to understand the movie.
I don't think you were too dumb, it's just that the movie was a bad adaptation of an otherwise brilliant novel
@@william2415 clues are scattered all over the movie, even the first scene is a major spoiler
abdur razzaq EXACTLY! That’s what made it so disappointing to me. You don’t get the satisfaction at the end of figuring out that the girlfriend isn’t real.
@@william2415 I have to disagree, the book is great but some of the changes made for the film were better. The poetic ending to the film is much more satisfying than the out of place gore angle of the book. Plus Charlie Kaufman throws in a ton of themes and motifs (that he is known for) that the book didn't have. IDK, its a great book but IMO Charlie Kaufman really fleshed everything out and made it more naunced.
Dragon Mountain Fanboy I see what you mean, however, in my personal opinion, a book adaptation is best served if all aspects of the source material are used. When a director starts to make changes, it no longer is the work they are adapting and instead becomes their own. I just don’t like adaptations that take liberties with the source material is all.
ur video essays are always something I look forward to :)
someone get this guy some engagement already!
you've got killer comprehension skills, unfair!
Get that engagement!
He was naked because he was experiencing hypothermia. Jake froze to death in his truck. For whatever reason people start stripping when they experience hypothermia.
There are also references and winks to the book Ice by Anna Kavan, I am just saying 🤷🏻♀️
yay now i dont feel as dumb as i did when the credits started rolling
My own interpretation is that the janitor was maladaptive daydreaming; as the story changes when the janitor views movies. I think he tries to live through his youth in his mind.
Drinking game: Take a sip of water when the glass moves
That shirt is amazing
I WAS WAITING FOR THIS VIDEO
Ok I haven’t even watched your video yet but I really appreciate this tittle. That’s all.
Engagement
lol I never caught the sneaky Mao in the background
yoo lol you're cited in my college essay thank u :)
this feels like fake honey, it sticks but it doesn't taste and that's because there's other 10 writtings that involves Kafkaesque lifestyle and you observe random statements that implements a scar in a world of patches. "The Penultimate" for me could and is one of those rare film, a triple budget is Blade Runner 2049. Kafka is everywhere but not everyone can be absorbed by his superficial world view.
Am I seeing things or is the microphone sitting in a bounce dryer sheets box?
He said he optioned the book because he wouldn't get funding for his own ideas
Great analysis!
Engagement 👍
PRECIOUS ENGAGEMENT!
You better review The Boys now
Precious engagement team. Plus, wouldn't want to miss your futur complex commentary on The Boys... Coming soon right?
I’m so confused. Big boy words
9 hours and no dislikes!
talk about grand army on netflix!
Hypothermia often causes people to rip off their clothes because they feel incredibly hot even though they're actually freezing. You... missed a lot of details here. Like the "Broadway standards" actually being the cheesiest Broadway musicals that are almost exclusively produced by highschool theatre programs... Thus exposing a lack of depth in Jakes understanding of musical theatre. He only knows what the local HS puts on.
Definitely a good point and a layer of the film I may not have pointed out, but I’ll raise you: knowledge of what’s passé within Broadway standards is still knowledge, arguably at an even higher level, that Kaufman is flexing whether intentionally or not, just by virtue of the film’s meta-presentation. I will admit though I didn’t know about paradoxical undressing until after I made the video.
Bro wtf I came to comment first and all your stans beat me
La musica de Hairy Frog.
Yo thanks that was good
You are Jake
Memory Police is way more better than Reed's Ending Things, give it a try
i really hated the movie, ngl. I'm not a fan of stupidly dense pretentious stuff and was really unhappy to have to sit thru what felt like someone's first attempt at lengthening a student film. the trailer was interesting and i am a fan of weird things, but the whole "spending 20+ minutes in a car talking nonsense in the most awkward way possible" made me decide to end things. wound up watching The Platform (2019) instead (hard to watch but a far better movie imo). glad that you could explain what the heck was happening in this movie, though!
This video is m e t a 👁👄👁
watched at 7k views, with 777 likes and 7 dislikes,,,
You’ve got hair
engagement
I actually hated this film. It provoked in me a strong desire to turn it off every scene or two and it was genuinely miserable to get through. (And I like his other films.).
Not a fan of creative works that rely too much on intertextuality. I felt this script demanding I pause to go watch Oklahoma or A Woman Under the Influence in order to fully understand it.
It seemed to constantly drift into the surreal for the sake of surrealism, choosing to confuse rather than elevate the underlying story. I couldn't figure out for the longest time if the janitor was a future version after these events had played out or if he was just making everything up in fantasy. It seemed so far up it's own arse when it didn't have to be.
That flew by! You speak really well, not pedantic at all haha
The book is far far superior. The film is terrible.
I really enjoyed the book and really, really disliked the movie. It was so bloated and pretentious, imo.
epic
Honestly, I like your videos man, I’ve been subbed for a while. But one thing about review is really annoying me. Why are you so upset about Kaufman changing the books he adapts to be his own? The way I see it, that’s what any good artist does. If you want the experience that the book gives you, then read the book. Why watch the movie? Stanley Kubrick made an entire career based off of changing people’s books to match his own vision. I just don’t understand why this is a thing that annoys people. And both Susan Orlean (the author of The Orchid Thief) and Iain Reid (the author of Im Thinking of Ending Things) like Kaufman, and respect the ways he changed their novels. I just don’t think it’s your place to get offended for them, and act like Charlie Kaufman is some control obsessed asshole who intentionally restricts the voices of the people around him. Other than that, good review. But god that annoys me so much.
Maybe I wasn’t coming across entirely as I intended; I think it’s great that Kaufman makes these stories his own and takes a thematic approach to adaptation, I’m just trying to explore the implications of the process on the concept of ownership of art, which itself is a very complicated topic and has a few schools of thought. And when I call Kaufman pedantic or ironically refer to him as a “man of his own ideas,” it’s meant more endearingly than it maybe comes off. He’s a genius and I think very few writers are able to conceive stories and concepts on as holistic and micro a level as he does, and I’m sure there’s no one Orlean or Reid would have rather had adapt their books. I appreciate the comment though, and thanks for the support over the years!
Omg too much plz speak normal for us mere humans