LET’S TALK ABOUT “LET THEM ALL TALK” Written by Esmarelda VillaLobos
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
There is this baby pink jacket that I own that seems to have survived my many moves and relocations over the course of the last few years. I don’t remember when or where I bought the jacket, but I do know that in my quite often state of forgetfulness I find myself misplacing it and sometimes completely unaware of its existence. But that just makes it all the more delightful when I discover it in the back of a closet or at the bottom of a storage box inducing me to exclaim something along the lines of “hey! It’s my pink jacket!”
Every time I do happen to find this particularly fly pink jacket and decide to put in on, and I mean every single time without fail, I will don the jacket and slip my hands into the pockets, feeling the familiar touch of a movie ticket stub. And every time, and I mean every single time without fail, I will pull said ticket stub out of my pocket muttering to myself something along the lines of, “what’s this for?” My eyes will focus on the faded print until my brain catches up to the fact that it is the same “Logan Lucky” ticket stub that has lived in the pocket of that pink jacket since I first saw the film at the Chino Hills Harkins on September 14, 2017. I would have been right in the middle of writing of one my favorite screenplays, “Rascal,” and it would be a full nine days before I suffered the traumatic knee injury that would put me on crutches and a cane, followed by nearly a full year and a half of physical therapy, PTSD, and the most crippling depression of my life.
Having said that, and not really thinking about all of it until the moment I sat down to write this review, every time, and I mean every single time without fail, that I pull that ticket stub out of my baby pink jacket, I still always manage to crack a smile.
It doesn’t make sense. It’s not a lucky jacket. I lose it all the time and I saw that movie right before one of the biggest setbacks of my entire life. But I’m afraid I love the “business talk” scene of “Ocean’s 12” too much to ever truly dislike someone who was involved in the making of that film… regardless of my suspicions on their sources of inspiration. In the last few years, I have a developed a deep fondness for Steven Soderbergh and his filmography. I still, to this day, have never seen “sex, lies, and videotape” because I’m too busy thinking about sex, uncovering lies, and dreaming of the better days of videotape, but after recently taking in both “Blood Simple” and “El Mariachi” for the first time, I know that there is an absolute treasure waiting for me on the other side of pressing “play” (I hope). I really wish that somewhere in all of the backwards, self- obsessed, technology loving, video game playing former boyfriends I have had throughout my life, just one of them would have been a true cinephile who wanted to spend their days showing me the new and old classics and discovering the weird and sordid underground films most of society has never heard of or talk about. Instead I always end up being attached to guys who like TV shows and sports. Its kind of a curse, honestly. I guess that’s what I get for experimenting with online dating at such a young age, but this is the cocktail of life and I am forced to drink it.
Steven Soderbergh is one of my favorite filmmakers. He is honest. He is true. Although I may not have seen “sex, lies, and videotape” yet, I drank in “Schizopolis” with such giddy delight that I can do nothing but hope to be interviewed one day wearing a T-shirt that says “nose army.”
I thought “The Laundromat” was one of the best films of 2019, but frankly there were so many good films in 2019 it is understandable that it went unnoticed, but not entirely excusable. “Let Them All Talk” reunites Soderbergh with the incredible Meryl Streep in a performance that feels like the amalgamation of so many of her recent characters all tied into one. I’ve noticed this character tick about Meryl that she does in multiple films of hers where in moments of awkward tension or anxiety-driven uncertainty surrounding a social interaction or heavy-handed conversation, she ever so slightly rubs her ears. I definitely saw it in “Let Them All Talk,” I saw it in “The Laundromat,” I saw it in “The Post” and I’m quite certain if I go back and watch it again I will see it in “Hope Springs.” It evokes this feeling of a little girl’s coping mechanism with a subject that she herself is finding too difficult to deal with in the moment while building the confidence to formulate a response. Meryl Streep is a woman who often plays characters who find certain notions or topics preposterous, often laughing and attempting to change the subject while still addressing the issue head on. It is that, it is those subtle intricacies which are the reasons why she is unquestionably regarded as the greatest living actress in the entire world. There is no question in my mind that she should be the one treated like royalty while aboard a crossing on the Queen Mary 2.
Now. Having said that, and having fully prepared myself for what I am about to say now, I must say with absolute confidence that even though Meryl Streep gives a wonderful, moving, and deeply meaningful performance… for the entire film, and as was the case with every single scene in which she appeared…
I could not take my eyes off of Candice Bergen.
I mean, wow. I know that any movie which stars Meryl Streep is immediately an Oscar contender because it stars Meryl Streep, but frankly, in this film, “Let Them All Talk,” Candice Bergen gives, what I believe, is the best performance of her entire cinematic career. She is magnificent. Her character of Roberta is so well executed, the dialogue is biting and curt, but frankly the words that come out of her mouth are so entirely meaningless because it is the reactions on her face, the stoicism, the stare, the seething resentment that has been building inside of her for the last thirty years which ekes it’s way out onto the screen and frankly made my jaw drop to the floor. I think a few weeks ago, before this film was even released, I was having a love affair with Candice Bergen. I had been watching the great 2017 Noah Baumbach film, “The Meyerowitz Stories: New & Revised” a couple of times on Netflix and she makes a brief but memorable cameo as Ben Stiller’s mother and one of Dustin Hoffman’s ex-wives. Although her character in Baumbach’s film is light and jovial, I began thinking about how Candice Bergen, in multiple films, is one of my most favorite villains of all time. She is fantastic in “Miss Congeniality,” she is biting in “Sweet Home Alabama,” and although she isn’t the villain, she is so memorable as the picture of success in “View From the Top” (the incredibly over-looked and undervalued 2003 Gwyneth Paltrow flight attendant rom-com).
In each and every one of those films (funnily enough, all shot in succession of each other within her entertainment filmography) Candice Bergen plays the embodiment of personal and professional success. In “Let Them All Talk,” Candice Bergen plays a woman who seemingly (and possibly at the hand of her own undoing) had that personal and professional success ripped away from her thirty years ago and never fully recovered.
It oozes out of her pores. She is very upfront about it – Roberta wants money. That’s it. She wants money that she can live off of: she feels that she is entitled to it and silently resents everyone around her for the fact that she doesn’t have any. You never quite find out exactly what for or why she needs the money. She never mentions any health expenses, gambling debts, children in financial trouble, none of it. She just doesn’t have the life she used to have, and she is personally enraged because of it. To make matters worse, Roberta is convinced that the event which took place in her life which resulted in her personal demise was exacerbated by a subtextual revelation in Meryl Streep’s most popular book which launched her career and led to her eventual worldwide success.
God, I love this movie. I’m having a huge case of déjà vu right now where I am convinced that I have already lived this moment somewhere in the realm of consciousness and am now in this moment making it come to fruition. Life has meaning, everything we do has meaning. Everything these women say and do and wear has meaning. It is fantastic. What makes the film even more fantastic is the fact that Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest’s characters in the film don’t entirely get it. They don’t get why Meryl Streep’s Alice Hughes is talking in such a fantastical way, they don’t understand the significance of her connection with this unknown writer, Blodwyn Pugh, they just don’t understand what all of the hullabaloo is about… until the end.
But even then, Roberta doesn’t really care to spend any time or say anything meaningful at Blodwyn Pugh’s grave. Roberta barely reads the book, she doesn’t understand the book, she doesn’t understand the connection between Blodwyn and Alice although the connection must be great at the end of the day. Roberta will happily enjoy all that the wonderful ship crossing has to offer, the fancy dinners, the galas, the masquerade ball, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make up for the pain that she has seemingly suffered at the hands of Alice’s prose. No… Roberta wants cash. Cold, hard, cash. She wants recompense, she wants her debts paid, she wants to be made whole. But if she gets that cash… will it be enough? What is the cost of repairing the last thirty years of your life? What is that dollar amount? Thirty percent of the profits? Will she be able to hold on to it? What will she do in the meantime?
She even goes so far as to steal Alice’s personal notebook after SPOILER ALERT Alice passes. Roberta then proceeds to try and sell it back to Alice’s publisher in the hopes and the lie that Alice gave it to her wanting it to be published. It’s practically inhuman. One could also easily argue that Alice’s predatory probing into the personal life of someone she calls a best friend only to not-so-subtly work those acquired secrets into a literary work is somewhat inhuman. Alice wrote more books than just You Always, You Never – this was just the one that happened to be the most popular (most likely due to whatever salacious content it contains) thereby making it one of Alice’s least favorite. Yet that is the book that got her the gorgeous two-story suite all courtesy of her publishing company and the Queen Mary 2.
The layers of this film are so rich and deep that devouring it is akin to tasting a magnificent soup that has been simmering on the stove for over a day and then scrunching your brow as you inquisitively ask the chef, “is there chervil in this?”
Delicious.
Every single second that Candice Bergen is on screen, you feel as though she could leap across the table and strangle Meryl Streep at the neck. I feel an almost tightness in my chest as I think about it, it’s chilling. Roberta hasn’t forgiven Alice, and she seemingly has taken no accountability for herself. This is all just speculation, but it would appear as though Roberta had an extramarital affair, told Alice, then Alice wrote about it as the central theme of her book. When it became a sensation, all of Roberta’s friends read into the subtext and, surmising that there must be a connection, the rumor mill subsequently began to turn.
Some people just don’t know how to take a deep breath, accept the loss, and move on to something else.
I need to mention a couple of last things, first – Dianne Wiest is also fantastic in this film (there is a little wave that she does in the beginning to get her son’s attention that, for me, sends chills down my spine) and finally, Lucas Hedges is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite young actors to watch. His versatility, his range, his ability to absolutely become a character and still stand out in his own right amongst a cast of three of the greatest living actresses is something to be admired. I truly hope someone gives him a signature role that helps define his career in the next few years, because I think he is on track to become the next Sam Rockwell, another actor who (although he has an Oscar) never really had a role that can be described as iconic. I truly hope in the next ten years that Lucas Hedges gets that iconic role.
Either way, I’m sad that I can’t watch “Let Them All Talk” in theaters. Because although on both viewings I was able to give the film my full attention, I would love to know what the experience is like to be deeply immersed in the mythology of the film and see the absolutely gorgeous shots of the Queen Mary 2 that Soderbergh has sprinkled as the backdrop for this intoxicating allegory about reconciling with life- defining relationships over the passage of time. It’s a movie that reminds you how real and permanent the choices we make in life are. It reminds you that holding grudges looks silly, that no amount of money in the world can buy forgiveness, and the best kind of friends are the ones who can carry on a whole conversation without ever having to be in the same room. Because even though it appeared right before things in my life took a turn for the worse, the love and admiration I have for this film is still as profoundly real as that faded little ticket stub permanently living in the left hand pocket of my baby pink jacket.