The End of the Tour
Director: James
Ponsoldt
Writer: Donald
Magulies (screenplay), David Lipsky (book)
Starring: Jason
Segel, Jesse Eisenberg
Rating: Three and a
half stars out of five
Available in
limited release now.
Jealousy and
admiration often run in the same circles. They're complicated
emotions, often rooted in the terror of not being good enough. LeBron
James started his NBA career wearing number 23, partly because he
admired Michael Jordan, partly because he wanted to be Michael
Jordan, and, while he would be loathe to admit it, he was not sure he
could measure up to Michael Jordan.
The same goes for
Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) as he
urges his editor to allow him to do a piece traveling with the
so-called writer of his generation, David Foster Wallace (Jason
Segel), as he promotes his dense 1,000-page novel Infinite Jest.
If that was all The End of the Tour aspired to be, it
would remain an interesting, personal look at someone we can only
know from reading and re-reading his words – Wallace committed
suicide in 2008. Luckily, the movie does its best to get inside
Wallace's expansive brain, much like Lipsky attempted to do in their
short time together, to explore his reticence to play that
generational-talent role. It gives the audience Wallace's
insecurities, second guesses, romantic and mundane addictions, and
in-kind jealousy of Lipsky for not having to hold that crown on his
head.
Their relationship
is encompassed in something Wallace tells Lipsky on the first night
of the in-depth interview. He has already had some touchy moments,
shutting down lines of questioning some people would eagerly discuss,
in between eloquent dissection of parts of himself and American
culture at large. Small things become rather taboo to him, and
Eisenberg as Lipsky, with his self-satisfied giggle and “knowing”
nods, puts further barriers between the two. Wallace tells Lipsky,
“I'm not even sure if I like you yet,” and that sense of feeling
each other out pervades the rest of the film. Segel's Wallace has a
mopey-but-sharp gregariousness one moment and a fierce need to
withdraw the next. The two often step on each other's toes, and it
comes to a head for an extended period – the movie's worst –
during a bit of romantic jealousy that involves a maybe-misconstrued
bit of flirtation on Lipsky's part with a former girlfriend of
Wallace's.
It's the worst part
of the film largely because it feels like an unnecessary dramatic
invention. Whether the blow-up happened exactly as depicted does not
matter, because it gets away from what the movie is. It is about two
immensely intellectual people coming talking to each other about
cultural anxieties. By inserting a sequence of the two not speaking,
it takes a detour from what makes this story compelling in the first
place and just spins its wheels for 15 minutes of precious screen
time.
But once it does
get going again, with, to the film's credit, nary an apology from
either side, the discussions take a turn for the extremely
introspective and dark. The two go back and forth, with a bit of
accusatory bite, about multiple layers of shame, sense of duty to the
collective world, doubt, and insecurity about how people spend their
free time. Segel makes Wallace a man who can barely keep it together,
forever unsure of which step to take next because of how it will be
perceived. In juxtaposition, Eisenberg's Lipsky is someone who wants
validation for his efforts, always putting out feelers and trying out
new ways to be perceived. They both feel bad about how they approach
the world and the things they do to keep their minds off their
troubles.
Wallace's
television addiction pops up a few times as a source of his shame but
also a vehicle for his greatest cultural criticism and satire. Like
in his real-life essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S.Fiction” and one of Infinite Jest's primary targets, the
film's semi-fictionalized Wallace espouses a great deal about the
effect screens have on humanity as a whole. When he gets a chance –
he purposely keeps his home free of a TV – he goes down a rabbit
hole of supposedly “low” culture because something inside him
tells him he must.
But where the film
falters here is by remaining too attached to Lipsky and the false
realism his account provides the proceedings. The camera may hold on
straight-on shots of a TV then reverse to Wallace's face, transfixed,
but it is still at a remove. This could be a product of Lipsky being
unable to enter Wallace's mind, the place he so wishes to be but
cannot crack the code. But movies are not limited in the same way.
Some dreamy subjectivity, perhaps in the Buster Keaton or David Cronenberg mold, would break up the handsome-but-ordinary visual
language of this picture and give the audience a taste of the
psychologic effects Wallace to desperately tries to convey in words.
The End of the
Tour fails that particular “show, don't tell” test and gets
mired in moments of unneeded heightened drama. But when the movie
runs on all cylinders, it's hard to beat. The image of two smart
people, eating dangerous amounts of candy, talking about what it all
means, outweigh the film's weaknesses.
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