ARTS

Marta used to work at a Dupont Circle restaurant. She knew the pandemic was coming and she spent what would be her last shift sanitizing the restaurant and spacing the tables according to reopening guidelines. That was supposed to be enough. A few days later, she learned from a co-worker that the restaurant would close either temporarily or for good.

“What am I going to do for work now?” she asks. “What am I going to live on? I have my mother in El Salvador, who’s already sick with diabetes and needs insulin every day. How am I going to look after her? How am I going to cover her groceries, her medicines?”

Marta’s mother only has her to rely on, and Marta feels immense pressure to provide for those she cares about. Her family can’t receive benefits because of her own immigration status and, more than anyone, her mom could use the financial support. The money Marta makes selling pupusas is enough for her immediate family in the U.S., but it leaves her with little to send home.

She laments that many others are in the same situation—they’re out of work and have no options other than cooking in their homes. It’s no way to live long term, and it saturates the market. At the start of the pandemic, she was making about 90 pupusas every weekend. Now, it’s more like 45.

She plans to keep cooking and seeking new customers for now, but she’s desperate for support. “We’re very stressed, very frustrated,” Marta says. “The government is really at fault for what’s going on because of how they discriminate against us, how they exclude us from so many things, but it would be good if they would come out with another stimulus package and include us, because we pay our taxes. We’re not in this country for free, we contribute to this country, and are working hard for it.”

Some have it harder than others. Aydee at least knows that her two sisters are with her mother in El Salvador. They can’t find work right now, but Aydee’s grateful her mother isn’t alone. In Alberto’s case, his dad never lost his job in construction and sent home the money that Alberto couldn’t for a while.

But every week, it’s a struggle for them and thousands of others who have been largely left without much assistance. In June, Events DC, the District’s official convention and sports authority, finalized its plans for a $5 million relief fund for undocumented workers.

The Greater Washington Community Foundation distributed $1,000 prepaid debit cards to immigrant families via five nonprofit organizations. While 5,000 people received debit cards, $1,000 doesn’t go far in a city with a high cost of living and no end to the pandemic in sight. (None of the immigrants interviewed for this story received these funds.) In the meantime, Alberto, Johana, Aydee, Benji, and Marta keep making pupusas. Back in Takoma Park, Alberto gets in his car and puts on Destroyer. It’s Sunday, around 5 p.m. The drive to Shaw won’t take long. His phone goes off. Another order is coming in.

The End

I’m Thinking of Ending Things Directed by Charlie Kaufman

The mind is a prison, at least according to films written by Charlie Kaufman. In Being John Malkovich, the hapless adult protagonist ends the film stuck in a child’s subconscious. In Adaptation, Kaufman writes himself into the screenplay, and is so full of self-loathing that he creates a fictional, more charming twin. These films are ostensibly comedies, and yet these heady ideas have a dark edge to them. It was only a matter of time before Kaufman would make something frightening, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things is indeed a disturbing film about the limits of self. Kaufman embraces more genre tropes than his usual work, although the frequent discursions can test our patience.

Kaufman uses rhythm and repetition to create a sense of unease. The long opening stretch involves Jake (Jesse Plemons) driving his unnamed girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) in the snow, and the sound of the windshield wipers start to create tension. They are on their way to visit Jake’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), who are eager to meet their son’s girlfriend for the first time. A blizzard descends on the remote farmhouse where Jake’s parents live, and amid awkward pleasantries, his girlfriend worries they cannot beat the storm on the drive home. But then all the characters enter a nightmarish purgatory state, one where all sense of time is lost and there is no hope for escape.

At first, the horror is like the world’s most uncomfortable comedy of manners. Jake’s mother and father attempt to be welcoming, but they speak and move like they’re slightly unhinged. If Jake was confident and charming on the drive to the house, he reverts to a childlike state once he gets there. There is no real narrative logic to how this plays, except what we see is a literal version of how the characters imagine themselves. Kaufman correctly realizes that our warped sense of self and our loved ones can be scary enough, so there is no need for any monsters or ghosts.

Ending Things has the shaggy, drab quality that is familiar to Kaufman’s other films. This one is closest to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both in terms of dream logic and the muted winter tones (fans of Eternal Sunshine will recognize a direct homage in a repeated shot). But what keeps the drama lively, even a protracted scene where the girlfriend recites poetry, is the specificity of the dialogue. These characters are smart, neurotic, and well-versed in a wide variety of topics. They debate philosophy, physics, and art, even movies. There is a scene, for example, where Jake and his girlfriend argue over the merits of the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence. The more you know about the topics discussed, the more you will understand what is really happening, and it is to Kaufman’s credit that he expects us to keep up.

The trouble is that Kaufman toes the line between unease and outright annoyance. He takes the source material, a novel by Iain Reid, and inserts his own unpleasant particularities. A little bit of silence would go a long way, but soon there are multiple stretches where seemingly nothing happens. Most psychological horror has the good sense to keep things moving, eking out information so we are curious about what happens next, except Kaufman would rather drag things out. This creates ennui in the characters, the girlfriend in particular, and that transfers to the viewer. All the characters have a strange mix of charm and exaggeration, so at least their inability to communicate is a showcase for tightly-crafted performances.

There is a shift in I’m Thinking of Ending Things where our sense of the characters profoundly changes. While it is not as pronounced as in the source material, Kaufman offers enough clues to grasp what Jake and his girlfriend mean to each other. There is poignancy to the final stretches where our point of view shifts, but you may not care about the specifics of who occupies what mental prison. Charlie Kaufman is unlike any other filmmaker, and he has created yet another film that is difficult to pin down and wrap your head around. It will certainly leave a long-lasting impression, albeit not in a way that everyone will appreciate. —Alan Zilberman I’m Thinking of Ending Things is streaming Friday on Netflix.