Depression is outwardly a quiet torment. Inside it’s an almost constant implosion of self-deprecating self-doubt. That’s what we witness in director James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour – wrapped around David Foster Wallace like his famous bandana. Woven all-too-frequently into the substance of his conversation with David Lipsky: the ravages of a cruelly oppressive internal voice. I left the theater feeling: “devastating. That’s the only word for it.”
It is devastating. I can’t tell you how often I sit in my office helping people struggle against very similar self-loathing voices. These voices can ruin a life. Cast out hope. Create absolute despair. We have it in Wallace’s own words, in, The End of the Tour, after a depressive breakdown in college: “You now see before you, indirectly at least, the real ‘Waller’: an obscurely defective commodity that has also been somewhat damaged in transit.”
Believing that the real “Waller” is a defective commodity – that’s the worst part. At The End of the Tour, Wallace says: “I don’t think we ever change. I’m sure I still have those parts of me. I’m just trying to find a way not to let them drive.” But, tragically, without hope, they did. I find without exception, in my work with depression, the unrelenting conviction that “this is just the way I am.” It’s not. But, convincing a depressed person that what they believe to be facts are not true – is one of the greatest difficulties in turning depression around.
A longer piece on The End Of The Tour will be coming up next week.
AMY