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.
