Charles Kaufman is a member of the Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick/David Lynch school of if-it-makes-no-sense-it-must-be-profound filmmakers. Certainly Kaufman's latest film makes no sense but it can indeed be beautiful to look at, thanks to cinematographer Lukasz Zal. Young Woman (as she is called in the credits) Jessie Buckley and Jake (Jessie Plemons) have been together for six weeks when they drive, in a snowstorm, to visit Jake's parents on their farm. Jake's parents are weird and get both younger and older during the visit. Young woman has to go home because she has work the next day and on their drive home Jake takes a side road to his old high school, where they see the old janitor we've glimpsed without any information earlier in the film, and a ballet danced by Unity Phelan and Ryan Steele in the otherwise deserted school. The film then ends with a much older Jake accepting the Nobel prize, with young woman (now made up as older woman) present in the audience.
The film reminds me of a bull session in my college dorm; yes, at one point Jake says "there's no such thing as objective reality" as he and young woman, on their drives, discuss everything from Wordsworth's poems to John Cassavetes's films. The movie does have almost everything, including a kitchen sink, a washing machine in a scary basement, dead frozen lambs, music from Oklahoma and an animated pig.
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