There can be great joy in seeing yourself onscreen. And there can be pain as well.
In The End of the Tour, Jesse Eisenberg plays a writer named David Lipsky. He has a full-time job at Rolling Stone, and he’s just published a novel. By most standard definitions, he would be considered "successful." But his novel’s gone mostly unnoticed and writing boy band profiles isn’t exactly fulfilling. Something’s missing.
When David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, published around the same time as Lipsky’s own novel, becomes a critical sensation, he reacts with skepticism at his rival’s achievement. Then he reads that achievement for himself. When he does, director James Ponsoldt holds on a long shot of Eisenberg sitting on Lipsky’s couch,…