Beyond Words: Steven Soderbergh's "Let Them All Talk"
“There must be a new way to use words to take you to a place beyond words…there must be.” – Alice (Meryl Streep)
Steven Soderbergh’s newest film was one of 2020’s best surprises—which may not sound like the highest of compliments in a time like this but it’s meant to be. Let Them All Talk (aka The Fall of 2019 as it has been subtitled by S-Bergh) is one of the director’s low-key finest accomplishments and demonstrates a masterclass on how to take simple setups and turn them into something formally expressive. In other words, Soderbergh locates the cinematic in the seemingly simple.
Centered mostly around dialogue-driven scenes, Soderbergh takes conventional shot/reverse shot sequences and makes precise choices in editing, rhythm, and shot placement to highlight certain tensions, emotions, or bring out specific aspects of his characters. Featuring five principle characters, Let Them All Talk is largely a study of the dynamics between them—something which Soderbergh relishes in, taking a film built of exchanges between these characters that is attuned to far more than just the verbal.
Meryl Streep plays Alice Hughes, an acclaimed author in the later stages of her career who is still haunted by an early breakthrough hit (à la Citizen Kane), You Always/You Never. Her publishers are eagerly awaiting her next project, a work in progress they nothing about but are hoping is a long-anticipated sequel to her beloved early novel. The agent on her case is Karen (Gemma Chan), who encourages Alice to attend a ceremony for a prestigious prize she is to receive in the UK. The problem is that Alice doesn’t fly, but Karen finds a solution by sending her on a cruise. Alice’s stipulation is that she bring some guests, rounding up two estranged friends and her wide-eyed nephew, Tyler (Lucas Hedges). Karen’s ulterior motive is to gather intel on Alice’s new book, so she goes on the cruise as well, incognito, and enlisting the help of Tyler to spy on his aunt.
The film introduces us to Alice’s old pals, Susan (Dianne Wiest) and Roberta (Candice Bergen), on their own turf, giving us a sense of their lot in life and a dose of their personality—above all else, this is a film of fully-shaped personalities. Once aboard, Alice gathers with her three guests and toasts to reconnecting but not before she can’t help but boast about her prize and informs them she’ll hardly be available during the cruise because of her impending book deadline. As she speaks, Soderbergh cuts to shots of Susan and Roberta that tell us everything we need to know about the state of their relationships.
Soderbergh loves to play with the possibilities of shot/reverse shot setups, cutting between faces against the dialogue to explore what faces and body language can reveal to us. This is where character psychologies, temperaments, tensions, and personalities are made most clear. Roberta’s bitterness towards Alice, which we discover comes from her having mined details from Roberta’s personal life for her famous book, is palpable in nearly every frame she appears in. When Karen invites Tyler to have a drink with her and asks him to help find out what Alice is writing, Soderbergh chooses to mostly hold on his face.
The young twenty-something Tyler is immediately smitten with this gorgeous woman over a decade his senior, foolishly mistaking her attention (and usage of him) for romantic interest. By focusing on his behaviour throughout this exchange, we see how he performs interest as he “mmhm”s his way through conversation, and how his face lights up when she mentions that maybe he can help her. Much of the film studies Tyler’s immaturity, his naive navigation of the relationship with Karen, and his exposure to lived adulthood through his time aboard the ship with these older women. In a later scene with Karen, she overshares about a failed relationship, and Soderbergh deploys this same strategy, holding on Tyler’s face as he pretends to keep up with and relate to an adult experience beyond his own. We can see how he is consciously trying to react to her words, contorting at every punctuation, awkwardly throwing in “wow”s, and fiddling with his tea cup.
This kind of approach completely transforms how these scenes play out and shows just how wide a range of choices exist even in the simplest of sequences. The subject of the scene isn’t Karen’s story—although it provides insight into her own messiness that helps explain why she may be oversharing in the first place—but the nature of Tyler’s boyish crush and the gap between the characters’ maturity levels. Soderbergh plays this scene to delightfully cringeworthy ends as we painfully observe Tyler’s behaviour. In another scene where Tyler comes off as young, he talks to Susan about how crazy it must have been having grown up “without any technology”. Here Soderbergh spends almost the whole scene holding on Susan as she politely listens to Tyler before she makes a joke, inferring from his clumsy phrasing that to him she, Roberta, and Alice are “dinosaurs”.
While Let Them All Talk is a wonderful demonstration of directorial control and formal choices, such an approach also relies heavily on his actors to deliver performances that fill out these shots with the right kind of detailed reactions and body language. Hedges is perfectly cast and together he and Soderbergh are able to generate laughs and character insight, crafting a poignant portrayal of young adulthood mostly through these non-verbal moments. It also comes as no surprise that Streep, Bergen, and Wiest are also superb in embodying these characters in a similar way.
Deborah Eisenberg’s dialogue, however improvised it may also have become, is perfect for its balance of wit yet not being too snappy, leaving enough open space for the actors to get inside it, and for leaving as much unsaid as said. By the time the cruise reaches its destination, Soderbergh has subtly mapped out an intersection of these characters and their relationships both through and beyond words. Let Them All Talk is a great example of how a movie can be driven by performance and dialogue and still be wholly cinematic.
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