The movie Jesse Plemons compared to psychological torture: “It changed acting for me”
Isolation and intensity are challenging to deal with as an actor, even for someone as accomplished as Jesse Plemons.
Discussions about the best young actor of the generation tend to bring up names like Timothée Chalamet, Paul Mescal, Austin Butler, and Adam Driver, but with over two decades of experience on his resume, Plemons has been more chameleonic and unpredictable than any of his peers.
He would be more so hailed for his brilliance if only his television work were being considered, as he turned in amazing performances on hit shows like Friday Night Lights, Breaking Bad, Fargo, Black Mirror, Love & Death, and last year’s Zero Day. Regardless, his talents have not passed by some of the finest directors working today, such that no other young actor can say that they’ve already worked with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alex Garland, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.
While Plemons has received nothing but admiration from his collaborations, there isn’t an acting experience that’s comparable to working with Charlie Kaufman, whose unusual, didactic style combines dark humour, ironic surrealism, and disturbing existentialism in ways that can be overwhelming, which may explain why it’s nearly impossible to watch a Kaufman film only once.
The actor starred in the writer/director’s 2020 Netflix film I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which he described as one of the hardest shoots of his entire career, and since he was shooting a lot of material on his own and had to study Kaufman’s script extensively, it became an experience that was as exhausting as it was fulfilling.
“I don’t think it’s spoiling much to say that in the first week, we were shooting pretty much in a car every day,” Plemons said, “Thank God we shot that on a stage. I was pretty intimidated because we were shooting on average 11 pages a day, every day, on a stage, prop guys throwing snow.”
Considering the directors Plemons has worked with previously were best known for their rapid shooting style, filming extended dialogue scenes with Kaufman was something he hadn’t experienced before.
“‘Psychological torture’ is too strong, but it did have a strange effect,” he recalled, “The longest take is something like 16 minutes, I think? So, it was like ‘Action! See ya in a while!’ It changed acting for me in a way, I think.”
It’s a testament to his bravery that he did not buckle under the pressure and managed to give a great performance in a highly unusual film. I’m Thinking of Ending Things was released in a year where moviegoers didn’t get the chance to see new films in theatres, but it’s unclear if it would have broken out in any way; regardless of the real-world events surrounding it, the film dealt with extremely tough subject material and was by no means an easy viewing experience.
Plemons didn’t necessarily need I’m Thinking of Ending Things to be a massive success, considering what he had in the pipeline as it was only shortly afterwards that he would receive his first Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his work in The Power of the Dog, and would win the Cannes Film Festival’s ‘Best Actor’ award for Kinds of Kindness. That being said, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a profound achievement that continues to get better with age.
