Building a film around nothing more than two people talking is a formidable challenge.
After all, there’s not much inherently cinematic about the exchange of ideas and philosophies, and the chance of creating an inert, monumentally dull movie is a very real risk.
So it’s to director James Ponsoldt and stars Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg’s credit that “The End of the Tour” feels as vital as it does — a duel of wits between two extraordinarily bright men, which changed both in ways they did not anticipate.
“Tour” is adapted, by screenwriter Donald Margulies, from writer David Lipsky’s “Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace,” Lipsky’s chronicle of five days spent with the author in the immediate afterglow of Wallace’s groundbreaking epic, “Infinite Jest.”
Lipsky (Eisenberg), a Rolling Stone writer in late 1996, argues the magazine should devote more coverage to authors, particularly those like the enormously talented Wallace (Segel). Dispatched to wintry Illinois, the ambitious but tentative Lipsky finds himself both enthralled and unnerved by Wallace’s diffident attitude and casual brilliance.