The End of the Tour

Public screenings
16^th October 2015 12.00pm at Vue West End
17^th October 2015 9.00pm at Cineworld Haymarket
18^th October 2015 8.30pm at Hackney Picturehouse

The End of the Tour is a touching biopic of an interview by Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky of renowned author David Foster Wallace and the growing relationship between the ideologically differing pair that grew over the five days they spent in each other’s company. The film spans the range of dialogue covered by the two men tentatively getting to know each other’s opinions on life, love, society and writing, discovering their insights and their failings.

The interview took place right after the publication of Infinite Jest, Wallace’s ground-breaking novel, yet the interview itself was never published. These touching moments resurfaced after the suicide of Wallace in 2008 as a memoir by Lipsky of their encounter.

Wallace (Jason Segel) is emulated in this film by how he described his writing, as morally passionate and passionately moral to help people become less alone in inside. Director James Ponsoldt produces a piece that confronts fear, what it is we are all afraid of and afraid to admit, and does so with a level of touching dedication surpassed only by Wallace in true life. Ponsoldt depicts the author without any need to dramatize which results in a beautiful simplistic narrative of a great man.

Segel’s study of Wallace does well to not characterise the author too much, paying respect to his outlook on life without falling into the easy foothold of portraying the eccentricities within his writings, often comprised of such an eclectic vocabulary and jargon. Eisenberg takes to the role of an inspired reporter obsessed by the notoriety Wallace possessed, providing an easy to dispute with yet growing ally as Lipsky. Whilst they can agree to disagree on many points, Lipsky failing to reach the depths Wallace has delved to in his understandings of human nature and modernism, Segel and Eisenberg emulate what it is to make a friend, albeit even for a brief moment in time.

With much of Wallace’s work focused on the prevailment of unselfconscious dialogue and experience in a media-centric society one is left to wonder what he would think of this memoir of his life.

Melissa Hoban

The End of the Tour does not have a UK release date yet.

For further information about the 59^th London Film Festival visit here, and for more of our coverage visit here.

Watch the trailer for The End of the Tour here: