The End Of The Tour takes us on the 1996 road trip between Rolling Stone journalist David Lipsky and acclaimed writer David Foster Wallace. We follow them through lovely cinematography, as David Foster Wallace promotes the 1,000 plus page novel Infinite Jest. The primary focus of this film is the idea that Lipsky wants to be the critically acclaimed novelist that Wallace is, and Wallace wants to have the normality that Lipsky has – though this theme is often dropped and picked up at convenient moments.
The movie is a road trip. Although compared to a music biopic, it doesn’t have extreme party scenes, but it does have great dialogue about writing, the pursuit of fame, and what makes people happy in a world where they’re increasingly told they should be.
David Foster Wallace is portrayed a bit tragically and misunderstood, which, in a general sense, he was. Though the film never truly delves into the depth of his depressions, his more narcissistic tendencies, it doesn’t necessarily show him for the man he was, but often hinted at the truth about what could be explored deeper. The fear fans had for this film, that was neither wrong nor true, was that it would whitewash Wallace as some sort of saint rather than the complicated man he truly was.
The acting in this film is another reason that it is held back from the greatness it could have been. Jason Segel does the better of the job, often managing to portray the conflicting emotions, but it never feels completely real, like something was holding him back from tapping the mind of Wallace. Jesse Eisenberg does a fine job as Lipsky, but ultimately never seems anything more than another Jesse Eisenberg character, just without the writing or character that made him shine in The Social Network.
Ultimately, The End Of The Tour is a film that had plenty of potential to be great. It had the chance to bring one of the greatest contemporary writers even more to the forefront of American culture. Instead, it is a film that is often hinting so much promise, the potential to be a great film is glistening through the screen – and perhaps for people who enjoy pretending to be smart and want people who are great to pretend they aren’t, this is a good film – but ultimately this film is more frustrating for what it could have been.
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