And Talk They Did

Let Them All Talk a film by Steven Soderbergh.  With Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, Lucas Hedges.  Available on HBO Plus.  *****

At one point in Let Them All Talk, a movie about three old college friends who do a crossing on the Queen Mary 2, Susan (Dianne Wiest) stops an awkward conversation at the table by saying something like, “Wait a minute.  I’m sitting at a table with the two most self-absorbed people I’ve ever met.”

I’d have to say she’s right.

Alice (Meryl Streep) is self-absorbed because she’s one of the most eminent novelists of her day, on her way to the British Isles to pay tribute to another novelist and receive an award herself.  For reasons she doesn’t specify, she’s unable to fly, so her agent booked her a place on the Queen Mary 2, and allowed her to bring along any guests she chose.  Alice brought her favorite nephew, Tyler (Lucas Hedges), and two old friends from college whom she hasn’t seen in thirty years, the aforementioned Susan along with Roberta (Candice Bergen).  And because Alice is finishing a novel and her literary agency is determined to find out more about it, one of the agents named Karen (Gemma Chan) also books passage, and enlists Tyler as a spy.  What Karen is hoping is that the new manuscript is a sequel to Alice’s most successful novel.

That novel marked a huge change in the life of Roberta, the second most self-absorbed person at the table that night.  She believes she was portrayed as Rowena in that book, that Alice got the idea for it after a long night when Roberta told her much of her life story, that the portrayal in that novel led to the end of her marriage and her subsequent run of bad luck.  At the age of roughly 70, she—among all three women—is the least successful, still working in retail, selling brassieres, as she says at one point.  She wants an apology from Alice, along with some kind of financial compensation.  The woman wants money period.  She spends her time on the crossing fishing for men, even though she knows that all these successful men could have much younger women, and that to them she’s “a piece of dead meat.”  Actually, though she’s a tad heavy, she’s still attractive.  What’s unattractive is her desperation.

At one point when Susan and Roberta talk—they have a number of conversations behind their friend’s back—they remark on how much she’s changed.  Who hasn’t, of course, but one can easily imagine the glamourous college students these three would have been, and the friendships they might have had.  Alice has been changed, presumably, by her eminence as a novelist, and though she seems to be a real artist, she’s amazingly obtuse about how she comes across to other people, including the agent Karen and a famous mystery novelist who is also on the Queen Mary, a man far more commercially successful than she who is nevertheless a gracious gentleman and has great admiration for her and her work, though she has nothing but contempt for him.  Alice has become an ethereal person, and seems to have lost touch with humanity (though she keeps trying to get together with Roberta, who is too busy chasing men and money to bother).

Alice nevertheless has the single best speech in the movie, when she is giving a lecture about the novelist she is paying tribute to, and says a remarkable thing, which at least gives us an idea of why she’s so devoted to her art.

“When I read this novel, it’s impossible for me not to think what a miracle it is.  That the universe emerged, what a miracle it is that consciousness emerged. And what a miracle it is that Blodwyn Pugh, her thoughts and experiences, that they could reach across time and reach into my consciousness. That’s a miracle.”

Until that moment, I had thought of her as a pompous ass.  That speech brought me up short.

The other thing that made her seem human was the way she treated Tyler, who as a young man enlisted for help by the agent Karen fell for her, and eventually made an awkward pass at her.  When he tells Alice, she says, “I hope you don’t regret that. That’s just the trying is all. If you don’t try, if you don’t risk.”

Ultimately Alice seems a woman trapped by her success.  Writing a new novel at the age of 70 isn’t a joy for her but a burden, as her agent is awaiting the due date and she, as she puts it to her nephew, is trying to catching lightning in a bottle for the second time.  Roberta is trapped by her failure, though it can’t be easy working retail at the age of 70.  The one of these women who seems content is Susan, who advocates for inmates in her work but also seems happy to have lived the life she has.  On the night when Roberta told Alice her story, Susan didn’t—as Roberta thought—go off to bed by herself, but joined an attractive waiter from the restaurant where they were eating.  (“Bow down, bitch,” she says to Roberta.  “Bow down.”)  She also loves the opportunity of being on the Queen Mary 2, as who wouldn’t.  What luxury.  I had no idea.[1]

The New York Times reviewers recently made a list of the best actors of the century and somehow, in a moment of sheer idiocy, left Meryl Streep off.  Meryl Streep is the best actor of this or any other century, as she’s shown time after time in a huge variety of roles, including this one.  She presumably doesn’t get the Academy Award every year because people are tired of handing it to her.  Wiest and Bergen are also great, as is the whole cast; the little mock romance between Gemma Chan and Lucas Hedges is charming, and Daniel Algrant does a wonderful turn as the mystery novelist.  I’m sorry this is only on HBO Max, because I’d like to tell my friends to run out and see it and I don’t know how many subscribe to this elusive service.  But this movie alone is worth the price of subscription, especially for someone near the age of the protagonists.  This man in his early seventies found it irresistible.

[1] Though it’s funny how the pandemic affects even one’s feeling about a simple movie setting.  I regarded that ocean liner as more or less a floating Petri dish.