Let Them All Talk

Not so much a movie as it was an outline for a movie. I loved the premise and the glimpses of character we see, but the improvised rambling felt like aimless meandering. The viewer is left feeling frustrated and lost.

The movie would have been so much more interesting with a defined structure. I loved Bergan's cynical and sassy character, and her trolling for rich men on the cruise could have been very funny with some well-written gags. Wiest's character is selfless and passionate, and we get a few small indications of how that impulse manifested itself in her youth, but how much more interesting would it have been had we seen perhaps how her giving nature affected her life (both the good and the bad). Streep plays a writer whose work delves deeply into others' lives, and at the same time, she is unable to connect with anyone. Is she just self-absorbed, or does she yearn for human interaction? I wish we could have seen more of that struggle within her.

And most of all, we never really find out exactly what Streep's character has written about Bergan's character that made Bergan's husband divorce her so many years ago. It's hinted at, and I think I sort of figured it out. But that information needed to be spelled out for the viewer.

There's also another character I would have loved to see more of. A highly successful mystery writer is also on the ship. Streep wants to pooh-pooh him as a hack, but he's actually thoughtful in terms of his work and his ability to "read" other people. There's a scene in which Streep is giving a talk on board, and the mystery writer asks a question about one of her books that makes it clear that he deeply respects her writing, and you can see Streep's heart melt with joy at being acknowledged. It is one of the only really moving moments of the film.

Oh yeah, there's a subplot with Streep's nephew and the employee from her publisher assigned to her. Completely useless.

What a disappointment! What a waste!

Depending on your mood, you might consider this film either a bore or a careful investigation of people or maybe even a fun experiment. Filmed on the Queen Mary 2 during the pandemic, having a small but stellar cast, with Soderbergh doing the camera work and the actors reportedly improvising most of the dialogue, this is a film about people getting to know each other and themselves.

There are no grand mysteries, though, no life changing events. Let Them All Talk is a literal description of what the director did with the film rather than a spicy "let's give them something to talk about". People are just talking while the exterior information is purposefully withheld from the viewer. For example Streep's character is a famous writer working on a new book, but you never get to know what the book is supposedly about. Wiest's character fights for incarcerated people, but never a juicy story does escape Soderbergh's firewall. Bergen's character boasts with her life's story of 35 years, but we never learn anything real about it. It is clear that the young boy is falling hard for the gorgeous Gemma Chan, but that is not explored in anything but the dialogue between the two. A bit of a personal trigger is the implication that she never realized what she was doing, like that's still a thing. Even the mysterious black man, who I suspected to be a red herring (and no, I am not trying to make colorful puns), is never than a funny unknown until the very end of the film where his role is revealed.

I think this film would have been terrible if done by someone less experienced or with some random mediocre actors. As such it is an interesting and carefully crafted experiment.

Or if you want to take it another way, imagine Contagion (2011) on a giant cruise ship during the Covid pandemic, but no one gets sick.

Bottom line: you will either grok this or not. It's not supposed to tell a grand story, but to let people talk and through that make themselves, and humanity at large, known.

How much you like this will depend on how well or how little you think the ways Soderbergh and Eisenberg develop the characters (apparently from what Ive read it was semi improvisation, Altman but with locked-down Soderberghian angles and mis en scene instead of long lenses and wandering pans). I would have loved to see how much the actors just came up with dialog on their own (usually not what we expect seasoned pros like these women to do), but over this story of a storyteller and her friends and what stories and romance inform the fictions we create is compelling and interesting, and the setting makes for these characters to have literate, thoughtful exchanges about how bloody difficult it is to be emotional with one another (or you can *confide* in others, but depending on the company).

In other words, I can see how this is an "experiment" in some part of the form, but it's so satisfying to see that this direct or made sure to craft it into a film and not just a bunch of ramblings that don't come to a head (and this does). It's really about something, about how we reconnect or make new connections and how tenuous those can really be based on what's happened in the past and trust issues or just how much a planetarium can bring a man and woman together, and all the while it feels like the setting and style and music are closer to a Golden Age Hollywood movie (but with a Soderbergh twist).

Please. Don't. Watch. This is like a Woody Allen movie without the comedy. I can't imagine anything more boring than this. I would like to corner the writer and director and demand my money back plus a fine for wasting my time. I feel sorry for the actors who will be vilified for foisting this mess on the public.

I approached this title with extreme skepticism, but from the beginning it spoke to me in a realist, naturalist and unpolished sense. Every conversation you hear feels raw and improvised like in real life however there is huge contrast when it comes to the flow and the planning of the film which feels effortless and elegant. It is a surprisingly beautiful piece of cinema touching on an artist's social struggle and the many ways one can touch other people's lives. In my opinion, essentially it is a film about the intricacy of everyday relationships and an artist's struggle between their social life and their work. It is about self-obsession and betrayal. And the loose way these themes have been portrayed in, gives you an odd sense of rhythm, the kind that you find in an actual conversation. At the end of the day the film feels like a conversation, and a beautiful and moving one at that. With the help of brilliant acting and simple but alluring cinematography.