The End of the Tour (2015). Movie Review

Actors and director

Director James Ponsoldt was personally unknown to me before this film. He has several tapes and 4 victories at festivals.

David Foster Wallace – Jason Segel and David Lipsky – Jesse Eisenberg. The latter is a well-known actor in modern cinema, and Jason is more in the shadows, because he did not grab stars from the sky, although he has been in the film industry for more than ten years. 

Siegel is known for several roles in TV projects and is as much a revelation and a mystery to me as the director of “The End of the Tour”.

Each of them did an excellent job, especially David Foster was very authentic. I don’t know what this writer was like in life, but the film portrayed him very well with the help of the casting department and, of course, Jason Segel himself. The other actors are all secondary.

This is a movie for two.

A little about the book “Infinite Jest” and its author

David Foster Wallace is a famous writer whose work has become one of the best in American literature over the past 20 years. When I first watched the movie, I didn’t know much about it. Now I read about David and his book.

The volume of “Infinite Jest” alone can testify to the great work that has been done. I still don’t see the point of reading it in translation, so I won’t have an adequate opinion about this work here. 

I want to read it, but not now. 

I’m a little jealous of those (English-speaking friends) who have read it or can easily do so by just buying it and understanding every word. To read such works of art, you need to know the language perfectly, in my opinion. The Best if you’re a carrier.

“Infinite Jest” is a sprawling novel that touches on such topics as tennis, drug recovery programs, depression, child abuse, family relationships, advertising, popular entertainment, film theory, and Quebec separatism. About 1,000 pages, not including footnotes, is a large work, which, according to the author, depicted himself, the life around him, problems that came up, people, questions, etc. 

This is a novel about life, about America.

In the movie “The End of the Tour” (2015) a lot of attention is paid to the work “Infinite Jest”, everything revolves around it as a central plot. Although the tape itself is about its author, this book is the author, they are practically one. That is why I decided to allocate a separate section to the novel in the review.

I think that writing books is a little bit like raising children, you know. You have to be careful, though. It’s ok to take pride in the work, but I think it’s bad to want the glory to reflect back on you.

Briefly about movie “The End of the Tour”

“The End of the Tour” is a film about the frankness of art and life.

The film is about writers, one of whom is known by default (David Wallace), the second (David Lipsky) appears in the film as a journalist who, after the death of the main character, writes a biographical memoir (“Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself”) about the seven-day trip with Wallace depicted in this film.

Lipski’s article (the work on which is featured in the strip) won a National Magazine Award in 2009, a year after the death of writer David Foster Wallace. This article is currently unavailable (https://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster).

The first dialogues of the film lack cinematic perfection, they breathe life, authenticity and realism.

This directorial move will feel confident and be implemented until the very end of the film. This makes it possible to shorten the distance between the audience and the actors as much as possible, it makes it possible not to observe the dialogue, but to be one of these guys, a third party. So you want to ask your own question or respond to a reply.

From the very beginning, this closeness captivates, stuns. At some point, you forget that you are watching a movie, as if these events are happening right now with you.

Simplicity

The writer’s house is located a few meters from the highway. One could stop at this, describing the main character, his essence.

Behavior, movements, clothes, street dogs in the room, creative mess – all this simultaneously stuns and instantly portrays this person as simple, frank and far from social excesses.

He has everything to live well, to simply live. The writer’s asceticism was very aptly shown in the frame in about two minutes. And the rest of the film you just find more and more confirmation of this initial observation.

The more people think you’re really great, actually, the bigger the fear of being a fraud is.

One of the goals of this video work is to show that writers, even so prominent and popular, are ordinary people who have their own complexes, like everyone else’s worries, have the same life, body, habits, like to watch TV, suffer and dream. To this may be added the modesty that accompanies this simplicity and intimacy.

The latter is demonstrated in various ways and is closely intertwined with the previous signs:

• the ease with which journalist David Lipsky meets a famous writer;
• a huge window in the house, which is completely open for observation from the street;
• his clothes, which do not change for several days.

In general, David Foster Wallace is a simple, ordinary American, outwardly an ordinary person, with his complexes, fears and prejudices.

I don’t think writers are smarter than other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity or in their confusion.

A gulp of air that is quickly expiring

A meeting with a journalist is like a breath of fresh air for the writer. 

His life is full of monotonous events that are repeated and for some reason they do not really please the writer, fame does not suit him enough to forget about his flaws and complexes, to grab the media horse by the mane and rush into the abyss of popularity. 

On the contrary, David Foster is boundless loneliness, it is a hidden hopelessness, it is a lifelong imprisonment within the cranium in constant efforts to go beyond words through writing, through the creation of new images, plots, fantasies.

And this darkness is visited by a person who also calls himself a writer and can make him a worthy company, witness his hopeless wandering through creative paths in search of the meaning of life and self-realization.

But this company quickly becomes a ghost, as the journalist works on the article, and Foster continues to live a life full of pain and suffering.

Their dialogues become more and more intense, only the topics touch on the sharp corners that happened on the writer’s path. And despite all this, he continues communication. He wants to remain authentic in the readers’ eyes of the future article, but at the same time he understands that this is impossible, because his vision of himself is immortalized by the paradigm of a journalist. 

He is too concerned with how he will be portrayed in this material, and this adds sparks to his tension, which sparkles in the flames of emotional responses to David Lipsky’s pointed questions.

Expectation

One of the overheard viewer’s comments in the cinema:

“I expected more depth, somehow everything is very superficial; these simple dialogues, nothing special.”

And indeed, the announcement, the presentation at the beginning of the film sets the bar quite high, you involuntarily imagine the future meeting and the image of the writer that is formed only in your head immediately appears. That is, everyone draws their own meeting, their own interview. 

For example, I had no expectations, I was used to such manipulations and just watched movies. Expectations are formed when you have nothing to occupy your head, when you want to play a game of anticipation with yourself.

Both the first viewing and the second were a complete mystery and discovery for me, because even knowing what would happen next, I still watched the movie here and now.

The expectation of the filmmaker’s depth through the construction and depiction of the relevant dialogues is shattered by the block of simplicity and immediacy of David Foster. He was like that during his life, he remained like that in the books, that’s how he managed to be portrayed in the movie “The End of the Tour” (2015).

A film about a writer

One of the few films that honestly and without unnecessary creative tricks depicts the life of a creative person who gave himself completely to art. 

This film will be useful to every writer, regardless of the stage of his creative career.

Maybe it will be a comparison with yourself, a test of life. Perhaps someone will recognize himself in the features of David Foster, and someone, on the contrary, will want to be his complete opposite.

This film is one of the examples of how to show life, how to tell about a famous person.

At the time of writing this review, I managed to watch several interviews with Foster. And you know what?

He is almost everywhere the same, he is completely free from playing to the camera, to the public. His humor, efforts to express himself accurately, to convey his opinion – everything is depicted in the film as in his other public speeches. 

Of course, it’s possible that this public image is fixed and therefore undifferentiated, but what the hell is the difference? We’ll never know what he was really like anyway, except for his inner circle. And within the framework of the film, it doesn’t matter.

To have written the book about how seductive image is, how easy it is to get seduced off of any meaningful path because of the way our culture is now, what if I become a parody of that very thing?

This tape is about the real life of a writer who achieved everything he wanted. That simplicity, ease of communication is characteristic of many writers of different levels, and this film is not so much about David Foster himself, but about these qualities that belong to him.

This is not a biographical film, although it was based on a real meeting, a real interview with a real journalist and writer David Lipsky, but, in my opinion, this film is more about America, about a person as such, about a writer as a profession, as a vocation, about addiction, about the American dream, about loneliness and helplessness.

Conflict in “The End of the Tour”

As in any adequate work, there must be something to cling to, so there had to be a conflict here as well. Moments where this is noticeable were not quite cleverly implemented and generally contrast with the main plot.

Many biographical works suffer from this, and this one is no exception. There is no cinematic conflict as such.

There was an attempt to depict him through the tension in the communication of two writers who are on opposite shores of personal achievements, but it seemed a bit too far-fetched to me.

Although on the other hand – it could take place in real life, because the actual script was written by this writer (David Lipsky). 

Perhaps he was really jealous of him, jealous of his girlfriend, and Wallace responded negatively to Lipsky’s communication with others, seeing in it a distorted theft of his attention and attempts to thereby degrade his greatness by showing disrespect.

Be that as it may, conflict does not look foreign, it is generally a part of our existence in various ways. And the fact that he was emphasized in the tape “The End of the Tour” is logical and expected, although, in my opinion, it could have been depicted in a more original way.

You do a really mean job at this… I got like 20 years to get you back.

David Foster Wallace had significant health problems during his life, which was the reason for his early death. 

And this part of his greatness, which is a symbol of indomitability, necessarily protrudes like the tip of the iceberg in everyday life due to misunderstandings with the environment, mood swings, eccentricities, etc.

This aspect will not be noticed by people who just want to watch the movie.

My statements and observations gain meaning and weight for those who were interested in the writer, his work, or at least read the text on Wikipedia. Otherwise, the tension in the film “The End of the Tour” (2015) turns into a two-dimensional photo card with a vague composition and unsuccessful framing.

When I wanna be alone, like, to write, I really do wanna be alone. And I think if you dedicate yourself, like, to anything, one facet of that is that it makes you very, very self-conscious. And you end up using people. Waiting them around when you want them around, and then sending them away.

Music

Just like the people in it. Call, witty, popular, understandable. Not sure if the soundtracks were heavily worked on, but they don’t sound raw. Music here is not even on the second plan, but on the third, and even further. It just exists and is good.

Conclusions

The film “The End of the Tour” is as frank as life itself.

It is about life and its diversity.

 

An outstanding writer and his book are just a tool, an example of how a person searches for himself through creativity, finds and continues to doubt that he is on the right path.

The cinema is difficult, not fun and tense.

 

There is no mystery, fast-paced plot, unexpected directorial decisions in it, but this is exactly what makes this picture attractive, because this is the main character and his work at the same time, in which he invested all of himself.

I strongly recommend watching:

1. To those who simply writes or considers himself a writer, who want know more about the writer David Foster Wallace,.
2. I recommend watching “The End of the Tour” who like arthouse and are not very excited about modern cinema.
3. For those who like reading and thinking.
4. But others will also be able to feel the tension, pain and joy of the famous writer, because the film turned out to be really strong.

I deduct two points only for the fact that this tape is not so much a film as a video recording, a report.

Biographicalness takes away from it the main levers of classical cinematography, the conflict takes on dimensions and is not resolved, which is partly disappointing.

But these are small things compared to the strong features of this film:

great casting management, great acting, great distance work, great accents.

 

The film “The End of the Tour” especially impressed me.

Twice.

My rating is 8 out of 10

Undoubtedly goes into the biographical films collection about outstanding people and 300 Movies About Writers List.