One sentence synopsis: A Rolling Stone reporter travels to North Dakota to interview David
Foster Wallace during his book tour to promote Infinite Jest.
Things Havoc liked: I did not know David Foster Wallace. I did meet him a couple of times. He was an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Pomona College while I was studying there for my undergraduate degree. I was not able to take his course, though friends of mine were, and spoke well and highly of it and him. Wallace,of course, became famous for writing a novel called Infinite Jest, a thousand page tome brimming with supposed genius unread by me, as I have little interest in highbrow literary fiction. But I knew, then and now, of his importance to the world of literature, a man compared unironically to Proust and Hemmingway, and wish I had had a chance to take one of his courses. Failing that, however, I have this film, depicting a lengthy set of conversations between Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter (and novelist in his own right) Dave Lipsky during the final days of Wallace's publicity tour for Infinite Jest in the winter of 1996.
I'm well aware that everyone I know has already closed the review, surmising that this is another self-indulgent writers-on-writing sort of movie. And it is. But bear with me a moment, I beg you.
The End of the Tour is the sort of movie Richard Linklatter would make if he were trying to remake My Dinner with Andre, the infamously impenetrable Louis Malle film from 1981 which featured Wallace Shawn and Angre Gregory literally having dinner and talking about philosophy and experimental theater. It is an earthy, pretenseless film about two intelligent men trying to have an intelligent conversation about a number of matters that seem great to them, conscious as they do so that these matters may not be so great in the grand scheme of things. It is a movie whose subject matter should interest about a third of one percent of the population, but manages nonetheless to be spellbinding, not through artifice nor revelations of grand and universal truths, but via the more simple method of portraying interesting characters on the screen and following them around a while. The centerpiece of it is Wallace himself played to a pitch of perfection I have not seen in some time by Jason Segel, a man I had so little use for previous to this occasion that I don't believe I've ever seen him before. And perhaps I still have not, for Segel transforms himself into... if not David Foster Wallace himself, then a perfectly credible facsimile of the man that might have been. Bearing Wallace's trademark bandana, expounding at length his vague, unclear theories on writing, his insecurities about being seen as faking normalcy through his quotidian habits, and indulging in those habits themselves, from junk food to a profound appreciation for movies like Die Hard and Broken Arrow (ah, the 90s...), Segel is absolutely spot perfect in a role that could not possibly have been anything but torturous for an actor better known for sitcoms and romantic comedies. I don't know how faithful the representation is. My friend who took courses from Wallace was convinced and so was I, though Wallace's estate disowned the picture and his dearer friends have all claimed it is a travesty, mostly sight-unseen. But I do know that Segel is almost impossible to not watch, displaying Wallace's vulnerabilities, his meandering prolixity, his desperate desire to remain in some way genuine to himself in the face of nagging fear that he has never been so. His Wallace is a man who is not a regular guy, but desperately wants to believe that he is, who opines a preference for dogs over a girlfriend because he wouldn't know what to say on a date, and then goes home to write thousand page epochal novels, who analyzes his own television addiction even as he indulges in it, all without ever appearing, as biopics of this sort can often appear, to be nothing more than a screenwriter's conceited attempt at inventing some "brilliant, conflicted" parody, the sorts of which we find on dramatic network TV all the time nowadays. Segel makes Wallace look deeply human, and it is an achievement I have seen very few actors attain.
The End of the Tour was directed by Indie darling James Ponsoldt, whose last film, The Spectacular Now, made the usual circuit of film festival awards two years ago. My tolerance for such fare is limited, but Ponsoldt's directorial style and production is very deliberately low-key in this one, filming the subjects in an intimate, low-budget style to accent the focus on what they're actually talking about. To this end, he has employed Jessie Eisenberg, an actor I've never had much use for, to portray David Lipsky, whose task in the film is less to portray a character and more to assist Segel in portraying his. Younger than Wallace and infinitely less successful as an author, Eisenberg uses all of his awkward slightly-superficial charm to play a character who must ultimately force Wallace's character open for his interview, with the helpful side effect of letting us see what lies within the main subject. He gets a lot across with small gestures, fumbling with a tape recorder or using a moment's privacy to surreptitiously itemize Wallace's entire house, the better to recollect the details of the article he will one day write. Eisenberg allows just a hint of the wormy, anti-socialness he brought to The Social Network to infuse this character as he challenges Wallace not just on subjects such as drug use and institutionalization, but also the way in which Wallace affects at normalcy while consciously dumbing himself down to appeal to "normal" people around him. He does this because he must, as an interviewer and a journalist, and because Wallace is a man who wants to explain himself to himself if not to others. They clash, fight even, sit in awkward silence, mutually decide to proceed as though nothing happened, and press one another on the answers to mysteries as varied as existential meaning and Alanis Morisette. One does not, in the aftermath, get the sense that it's an experience Wallace would be interested in repeating, nor one that propelled Lipsky to new profound heights with his own writing. But the interplay between the characters offers so much richness of character and depth, that the plain intention is to offer us, the audience the catharsis that neither of them are capable of generating. And it is a strange movie indeed that causes me to write sentences like that.
Things Havoc liked: I did not know David Foster Wallace. I did meet him a couple of times. He was an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Pomona College while I was studying there for my undergraduate degree. I was not able to take his course, though friends of mine were, and spoke well and highly of it and him. Wallace,of course, became famous for writing a novel called Infinite Jest, a thousand page tome brimming with supposed genius unread by me, as I have little interest in highbrow literary fiction. But I knew, then and now, of his importance to the world of literature, a man compared unironically to Proust and Hemmingway, and wish I had had a chance to take one of his courses. Failing that, however, I have this film, depicting a lengthy set of conversations between Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter (and novelist in his own right) Dave Lipsky during the final days of Wallace's publicity tour for Infinite Jest in the winter of 1996.
I'm well aware that everyone I know has already closed the review, surmising that this is another self-indulgent writers-on-writing sort of movie. And it is. But bear with me a moment, I beg you.
The End of the Tour is the sort of movie Richard Linklatter would make if he were trying to remake My Dinner with Andre, the infamously impenetrable Louis Malle film from 1981 which featured Wallace Shawn and Angre Gregory literally having dinner and talking about philosophy and experimental theater. It is an earthy, pretenseless film about two intelligent men trying to have an intelligent conversation about a number of matters that seem great to them, conscious as they do so that these matters may not be so great in the grand scheme of things. It is a movie whose subject matter should interest about a third of one percent of the population, but manages nonetheless to be spellbinding, not through artifice nor revelations of grand and universal truths, but via the more simple method of portraying interesting characters on the screen and following them around a while. The centerpiece of it is Wallace himself played to a pitch of perfection I have not seen in some time by Jason Segel, a man I had so little use for previous to this occasion that I don't believe I've ever seen him before. And perhaps I still have not, for Segel transforms himself into... if not David Foster Wallace himself, then a perfectly credible facsimile of the man that might have been. Bearing Wallace's trademark bandana, expounding at length his vague, unclear theories on writing, his insecurities about being seen as faking normalcy through his quotidian habits, and indulging in those habits themselves, from junk food to a profound appreciation for movies like Die Hard and Broken Arrow (ah, the 90s...), Segel is absolutely spot perfect in a role that could not possibly have been anything but torturous for an actor better known for sitcoms and romantic comedies. I don't know how faithful the representation is. My friend who took courses from Wallace was convinced and so was I, though Wallace's estate disowned the picture and his dearer friends have all claimed it is a travesty, mostly sight-unseen. But I do know that Segel is almost impossible to not watch, displaying Wallace's vulnerabilities, his meandering prolixity, his desperate desire to remain in some way genuine to himself in the face of nagging fear that he has never been so. His Wallace is a man who is not a regular guy, but desperately wants to believe that he is, who opines a preference for dogs over a girlfriend because he wouldn't know what to say on a date, and then goes home to write thousand page epochal novels, who analyzes his own television addiction even as he indulges in it, all without ever appearing, as biopics of this sort can often appear, to be nothing more than a screenwriter's conceited attempt at inventing some "brilliant, conflicted" parody, the sorts of which we find on dramatic network TV all the time nowadays. Segel makes Wallace look deeply human, and it is an achievement I have seen very few actors attain.
The End of the Tour was directed by Indie darling James Ponsoldt, whose last film, The Spectacular Now, made the usual circuit of film festival awards two years ago. My tolerance for such fare is limited, but Ponsoldt's directorial style and production is very deliberately low-key in this one, filming the subjects in an intimate, low-budget style to accent the focus on what they're actually talking about. To this end, he has employed Jessie Eisenberg, an actor I've never had much use for, to portray David Lipsky, whose task in the film is less to portray a character and more to assist Segel in portraying his. Younger than Wallace and infinitely less successful as an author, Eisenberg uses all of his awkward slightly-superficial charm to play a character who must ultimately force Wallace's character open for his interview, with the helpful side effect of letting us see what lies within the main subject. He gets a lot across with small gestures, fumbling with a tape recorder or using a moment's privacy to surreptitiously itemize Wallace's entire house, the better to recollect the details of the article he will one day write. Eisenberg allows just a hint of the wormy, anti-socialness he brought to The Social Network to infuse this character as he challenges Wallace not just on subjects such as drug use and institutionalization, but also the way in which Wallace affects at normalcy while consciously dumbing himself down to appeal to "normal" people around him. He does this because he must, as an interviewer and a journalist, and because Wallace is a man who wants to explain himself to himself if not to others. They clash, fight even, sit in awkward silence, mutually decide to proceed as though nothing happened, and press one another on the answers to mysteries as varied as existential meaning and Alanis Morisette. One does not, in the aftermath, get the sense that it's an experience Wallace would be interested in repeating, nor one that propelled Lipsky to new profound heights with his own writing. But the interplay between the characters offers so much richness of character and depth, that the plain intention is to offer us, the audience the catharsis that neither of them are capable of generating. And it is a strange movie indeed that causes me to write sentences like that.
Things Havoc disliked: The End of the Tour is a film with very narrow horizons, by requirement,
certainly, and that's no bad thing, but given how enrapturing the lead
performance is, one wonders at the inclusion of everything else. An
extended introduction to Lipsky, his work as a novelist and reporter,
his budding interest in conducting the interview and the process whereby
he convinces his boss to let him eats up a lot of runtime, and I'm not
convinced it pays off in any way in revealing more about the subject of
the film. As I mentioned above, the movie isn't really about Lipsky,
but uses Lipsky to reveal more about Wallace, and while that's the right
call manifestly, this much focus on the other character makes me wonder
if that was not something of an accidental design choice.
There's also a good deal of stunt casting going on, from Ron Livingston as Lipsky's Rolling Stone boss to Joan Cusack as Wallace's hapless driver and escort around Minneapolis. Neither of them are bad at their roles, particularly not Livingston, whom I always love to watch. But Segel is so good at becoming Wallace, and Eisenberg so good at deflecting the spotlight back at him, that one forgets that one is looking at actors at all, until one is violently reminded of such by Cusack or Livingston. It's an unfair criticism, I acknowledge as much, but a filmmaker's job is to artfully craft a reaction from an audience, and my reaction was that I'd almost have preferred a more stripped-down version of this story to one that felt the need to dip back into more conventional cinema every half hour or so.
There's also a good deal of stunt casting going on, from Ron Livingston as Lipsky's Rolling Stone boss to Joan Cusack as Wallace's hapless driver and escort around Minneapolis. Neither of them are bad at their roles, particularly not Livingston, whom I always love to watch. But Segel is so good at becoming Wallace, and Eisenberg so good at deflecting the spotlight back at him, that one forgets that one is looking at actors at all, until one is violently reminded of such by Cusack or Livingston. It's an unfair criticism, I acknowledge as much, but a filmmaker's job is to artfully craft a reaction from an audience, and my reaction was that I'd almost have preferred a more stripped-down version of this story to one that felt the need to dip back into more conventional cinema every half hour or so.
Final thoughts: In 2008, David Foster Wallace hanged himself at his home outside Pomona
College after a lifelong battle with depression and anxiety. He was 46.
His longtime editor described him as "a comet flying by at ground
level", while fellow author Bret Easton Ellis, writer of American
Psycho, called him the biggest literary fraud of his lifetime (it should
be mentioned that Ellis went on to claim that women were incapable of
directing movies because they lacked the necessary 'male gaze', so take
that for what you will). The End of the Tour does not seek to explain
what David Foster Wallace's place was in American literature, nor to
understand his depression and suicide holistically, though both subjects
are touched upon, with some care, by the characters themselves.
Instead, it seeks, as best it can with a subject who has been dead for
seven years and who would likely not have wished to have biographical
films made about him were he not, to portray a version of the man as he
either was or might have been. In this, it is an unqualified success, a
movie that rivets the attention as it digresses whimsically through
perspectives on writing, Americana, angst, ego, and the need to be
accepted or recognized. I will not pretend that these subjects aren't
personally of interested to me, but my tolerance, as all of you have
learned, for pretentious tripe done up in indie trappings, is very
limited, and I have not hesitated to pillory critically-acclaimed films
of this sort in the past, should they transgress my limits. Yet I keep
returning, despite films like Under The Skin or Boyhood, precisely in
the hopes that a thoughtful, hungry young indie director will make a
movie like this one, a movie I simply wished to continue, that I might
hear more of what this version, real or fictional, of David Foster
Wallace had to say.
I did not know David Foster Wallace. I did meet him a couple of times. Perhaps the person I met in the theater last week was very much like him and perhaps he was not, and perhaps, as Wallace himself believed, all biographies are suspect, because the life of an author is incidental to his work. But whoever he was, making his acquaintance again was one of the best times I've had in a theater this year.
I did not know David Foster Wallace. I did meet him a couple of times. Perhaps the person I met in the theater last week was very much like him and perhaps he was not, and perhaps, as Wallace himself believed, all biographies are suspect, because the life of an author is incidental to his work. But whoever he was, making his acquaintance again was one of the best times I've had in a theater this year.
Final Score: 8/10
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