Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.15
Hyper-awareness and
second-guessing are the absolute death of joie de vivre; when we scrutinize
every thought and deed, the inevitable results are despair and utter paralysis.
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| Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg, left) initially assumes that celebrated author David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) is delighted by book tours ... because that's the way he (Lipsky) would react to such acclaim. But Wallace is a different soul entirely, and landing in Minneapolis for yet another mindless public appearance is far from his idea of fun. |
This is one of several lessons to
be learned from The End of the Tour, a heartfelt, thoughtfully engaging
depiction of writers, the writing process and the price of fame. The film is
anchored by the subtle, richly nuanced performances of its two stars: most
particularly Jason Segel, demonstrating a level of acting intensity that will
surprise viewers who know him solely for overly broad comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement and television’s How I
Met Your Mother.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
Donald Margulies’ screenplay is drawn from an actual event: the five-day “brief
encounter” that Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) spent
with wunderkind author David Foster Wallace (Segel) in 1996, while shadowing
the conclusion of the latter’s book tour for his highly celebrated epic novel, Infinite Jest. Wallace did not wear celebrity well; Lipsky, too much in awe
of a man whose talent and acclaim he coveted, likely was a poor choice for the
assignment.
And yet, at the same time, he
probably was the best choice. Such are the tantalizing ironies that dance
throughout Margulies’ piquant script, which is based on Lipsky’s own
best-selling memoir of this meeting, 2010’s Although of Course You End Up
Becoming Yourself.
Although director James
Ponsoldt’s intimate drama focuses on the interactions between these two men, as
Lipsky and his ubiquitous tape recorder intrusively chronicle even the most
trivial aspects of Wallace’s behavior — such as when he discards the pickle
from a fast-food hamburger — this isn’t strictly a talking-heads stage
experience such as 1981’s My Dinner with Andre. Sidebar characters pop into
this narrative, mostly to catalyze the intensity of subsequent conversations,
but also to serve as physical examples of the philosophical issues with which
Wallace constantly grapples.
That said, this is a
dialogue-heavy film, replete with plain-vanilla two-shots. That shouldn’t be
read as an indictment; debate is dull only if the participants — and their
topics — are boring. That absolutely isn’t true here; as also was the case with My Dinner with Andre, watching this film is like eavesdropping on truly
fascinating people.
Contrasting people, at that.
Segel’s Wallace, although constantly laboring beneath a cloud of despair so
tangible that we sometimes seem to see it, nonetheless tries, at all times, to
articulate his feelings and impressions with a candor that Jesse Eisenberg’s
Lipsky couldn’t manage if his life depended on it.
