Vanderbilt Has A Lot To Say About Love, Loss In Film

If you ask, "What is left to be said?" about a woman whose entire life has been lived in the spotlight of media and public attention, let me say: The custody suit subjected little Gloria to constant coverage by the press, something she not only got used to but, in a way, thrived on for the rest of her life. Though Vanderbilt rarely ducks a question altogether, she has an enticing way of seeming to offer useful information but implying there might be more to the answer. If you know her life story, you know that she eventually found marital stability with Wyatt Cooper but lost him to heart failure when he was just 50. Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper share the loss of Wyatt, but the CNN anchor was just 10 when his father died. Vanderbilt recounts what happened that hot July day when Carter awoke from a nap, seemed disoriented and rushed through the open terrace doors of his mother's Manhattan apartment. In films such as "Bobby Fischer Against the World," "Love, Marilyn," the Nina Simone film and this one, she is driven not just to go beneath the known surface of public personalities but to use that mythology as a lens on her subjects' inner lives. To the extent humanly possible, her drive results in films with singular insight. "Nothing Left Unsaid" offers great insight into the lives of its subjects, but its even greater achievement as a film is the unanswered questions it provokes in its viewers.