The End of the Tour
Director: James Ponsoldt
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Segel
Story: David Lipsky
Screenplay: Donald Margulies
I found it exhilarating to see a film totally dominated by smart — sometimes profound, often revelatory –- talk which has little plot or drama and avoids providing any displays of directorial virtuosity. The film depicts the five days during which journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) spent interviewing literary giant David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) during a book tour for “Infinite Jest” — a novel that gave Wallace sudden fame. It’s a two-hander; the other characters are basically undefined extras, and the two lead actors provide nuanced, intricate performances that carry the film.
Eisenberg plays Lipsky with his usual sharp, nervy, slightly unpleasant insidiousness, even creepiness — he goes through Wallace’s medicine cabinet to get a handle on him. He is also a novelist somewhat envious of Wallace’s talent and success, who may be as interested in observing Wallace so his magic can be absorbed, than getting the interview. Still, he truly respects and likes him, possibly too much to write a successful story about him. (The interview was never published, though a book by Lipsky about the interview was: “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself”)
Wallace, brilliantly embodied by Segel whose forte is usually comedy (he starred for many years in the TV sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”) is bearishly warm, slightly recessive, lonely, touched with anxiety and despair, intensely self-aware and defensively self-deprecating — asserting his ordinariness. The two of them have moments of genuine connection, but Wallace is wary (somewhat justified) of the journalist’s seeking a sensational hook for his story. Open as he is, he remains on his guard and hostile moments occur between them.
Much of the talk is about celebrity and how it undermines the humanity of the writer, the gap between the writer’s persona and his reality, and the emptiness of pop culture, which Wallace also loves. The whole film is shadowed by Wallace’s suicide in 2008 — twelve years later. A certain amount of prefiguring takes place in the film, but it offers no easy explanation of why he committed suicide.
The film needs more than one viewing to get at its essence, but one screening will whet one’s desire to read Wallace, and take pleasure in the uncompromising intelligence of the work.
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End of the Tour is playing at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, Mass. For show times and to buy tickets, click here.
