Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Dianne Wiest all in one movie? Heaven. Put them all in a cruise ship? Ideal (and in these pandemic times, even more so) Gemma Chan is just cherry on top of the icing in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Let Them All Talk.’ I am sure that this film will polarize people, but count me among those who loved this film. ‘Dames At Sea’ was a 1969 musical, this film can be aptly called Grand Dames at Sea, and we should all jump aboard.
Getting on a ship changes someone’s psyche. You are ‘stuck’ there with seemingly no escape, and there’s something magical that happens there. But at the same time, the situation kind of toys with your head. In every cruise that I have taken (about a dozen or so by now) I have learned something new about myself.
But excuse me, the characters here are in a Crossing. Streep plays Alice, an author who is to receive a prestigious award in London, but she cannot fly so she takes the Queen Mary 2, and tags along her friends Roberta (Bergen) and Susan (Wiest) She also takes her nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges) with her. Once in the boat, we find out her literary agent Karen (Gemma Chan) is also on board to spy on Alice to make sure she is working on her manuscript. Much if what happens is supposedly half-improvised by the actors themselves, and it doesn’t show, to be honest. While the format is loose, the dialogue is pretty tight, and you can see the actors in their A game. Streep is calculatingly precise as Alice, and this is a classic Streep performance, tics and all (You will either love it or hate it) but the standout for me is Bergen, who plays a woman boiling underneath from a friend’s betrayal. I liked Hedges here, but I felt I didn’t really know his character, and was just used to move the plot forward (same with Chan’s character) I ultimately got swept in the characters and how they interacted with each other, and seeing fine actresses work flawlessly. Soderbergh gave them room to breathe and show their flares, and we are all the lucky to be in their presence.
When Shia LeBouf was in rehab, his therapist asked him to write down some of his memories, as they thought he was suffering from PTSD. Those writings, fleshed out, became the screenplay for ‘Honey Boy.’ Sadly, it feels like it. I know a lot of people like this film immensely, but I am not on that camp. For the most part, I thought the film was self-indulgent and one note. I empathize with what the character went through (here the LaBeouf character is named Otis) and the performances are across-the-board outstanding, but I didn’t connect with the film at all.
Someone described Trey Edwards Shults’ ‘Waves’ as a modern version of ‘Ordinary People’ so I know at some point there will be some kind of tragedy that will be affecting the Southern Florida family here. (Some people have also described it as similar to the television show ‘This Is Us’ so I also wondered if, just like that television show, the film would fetishize grief) The films tarts out light, but gets very intense right away. I am sometimes averse to suspense, so I spent a lot of time ‘waiting’ for the tragedy to happen, and I sense that it would affect the character of Tyler, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Tyler is a star athlete, and prized student, and you just know there something darker looming there somewhere. When tragedy finally strikes – and it happens with great masterful storytelling – and his and his family’s world unravels, I breathed a sigh of relief. I told myself I can finally relax and ride the wave of how the movie will unfold. It is then that the second half of the film starts, and there’s a jarring change of pace and texture. While the first part is sharp and frenetic, the latter half is softer, more contemplative, tender and sensitive. The movie shifts to Emily (Taylor Russell) who together with her parents (Sterling K Brown and Renee Elise Goldberry) are left to pick up the broken pieces of their lives.
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a Julie Roberts performance, though I do remember the last time I enjoyed a Julia Roberts film (that would be ‘Wonder’ from last year) But I thin she is fantastic in Peter Hedges’ Ben Is Back,’ wherein you can see Roberts go deep and try to get in a character, instead of just trying to go by and wing the performance through her trademark guffaw. In here, she plays Holly, a mother who has to deal with her son coming home from rehab to spend Christmas at home, and Roberts is great at that opening scene wherein she sees her son and her face has to show a multitude of emotions – glee with his arrival, but at the same time there’s concern and fear with what might happen. Roberts owns the film from that moment, as we experience what she goes through for twenty four hours.
Luha Thoughts 