Throughout the entirety of Charlie Kaufman's psychological thriller few events in the movie are real.
The film follows Jake (Jesse Plemons) and his girlfriend known as Lucy/Louisa/Lucia (Jessie Buckley) as they go to visit his family's farm where she will meet his parents—portrayed by existential dread and a deep fear of dying alone. As the two share dinner with Jake's parents, the young woman's name and jobs shift dramatically from what they once were just moments prior.
Kaufman is known for his films that explore relationships and loneliness, such as Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York. In this recent addition to his filmography, the director explores a much more complex representation of the two. While the young woman's jobs may appear to be a small detail in the larger story of I'm Thinking Of Ending Things, they are actually some of the most revealing insights into Jake's mind in the movie.
The Young Woman's Jobs Explained
The ending of I'm Thinking Of Ending Things reveals that the young woman is a figment of Jake's imagination, as such, it is appropriate to discuss her jobs in the context in which they are given to her. When the story begins, she is a college student studying literature and poetry. As they drive to the family farm, the two discuss one of William Wordsworth's most famous poems titled "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", which reflects Jake's own fears of growing old and the inability to retain memories of childhood. Her collegiate career is given to her in order to mirror his own interests in literature. She becomes a painter once the dinner begins. The landscapes she shows Jake's parents are actually paintings he had done in his youth that she discovers in the basement. This career and detail reveal that he has creative dreams he was never able to achieve.
Moments later, she becomes a student of quantum physics. Jake's childhood bedroom contains various books on the subject. Later in the film, his mother references his twentieth birthday which is actually the age he dropped out of college. This fact, alongside his ending recitation of mathematician John Nash's speech in A Beautiful Mind, suggests that he may have majored in the subject while in school. A Robert Zemeckis credit is shown on a romantic comedy about a server. Which is followed by his mention that she worked as a waitress and they met while she was working, similar to the short film's scenario. Her studies change for the last time with gerontology. In the midst of discussing Suzie's aging and death, Jake asserts that Lucy/Louisa/Lucia studies aging. In doing so, he expresses his guilt towards not being able to help them in the ways he wish he could have in their final moments.
Each job and major that the young woman has indicates a specific aspect of Jake's inner thoughts, desires, and unachievable goals. They change in order to reveal how reality is breaking through to his fantasy, as well as projecting himself onto who the woman he wishes he had talked to during trivia night. Charlie Kaufman artfully weaves in subtle hints that the young woman is Jake as well as his fantasy by presenting ever-changing careers for her in I'm Thinking Of Ending Things.
