LA GRANDE — The 15th annual Eastern Oregon Film Festival is fast approaching. This year will include screenings for 32 films. Among them: “The Way We Speak,” from director Ian Ebright.

“The Way We Speak,” which places essayist Simon Harrington on the eve of his debut on the great-thinkers stage, clearly shares screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s fascination with scrutinizing the foibles of well-spoken, largely pathetic White men (for a good while, the film appears to practically be a semi-remake of Sorkin’s 2015 film “Steve Jobs”). Writer-director Ebright covers this thoroughly trodden ground adequately, in a production that looks far more expensive than it was. Patrick Fabian is appropriately loathsome, and sometimes recognizable, as the proud, pretentious protagonist.

Simon’s story, which unfolds as tragedy strikes and the well-maintained façades inevitably fall away, offers little surprise: he is rude, callous, insecure, hurting, human — c’est la vie. Where “The Way We Speak” shines is in everyone else’s stories. Alongside Fabian are Diana Coconubo as his wife Dr. Claire Harrington, Ayanna Berkshire as Rampart (analogous to the TED conference) president Annette, and Kailey Rhodes as his debate opponent Sarah. All fill their roles most handsomely.

Over the course of the film, we are given glimpses into the interiors of Simon’s interlocutors, who are all grieving and struggling in their own fashion. They, too, make rash decisions, stumble and recover, and in ways that are messy, even uncomfortable — in ways as engaging as Simon’s strife is familiar.

At the center of the drama is a days-long debate between Simon, a “militant” atheist, and Sarah, a best-selling Christian writer. Simon comments that the theism vs. atheism debate is “passé,” and he’s not wrong — as the debate unfolds, no novel points are brought to the table by either side. But the point the film is making with the back-and-forth is not one on faith: instead, we explore the good-faith and bad-faith ways of engaging in dispute.

You could say that it’s not about what is being said, but rather, the way it is spoken…

“The Way We Speak” is a commendable talkie, striving for greatness like its protagonist. It almost achieves such standing and perhaps could have, had the perspective been shifted more fully to the women surrounding Simon.

Definitely worth a watch, and keep an eye out for the Coconubo, Berkshire and Rhodes: they’re going places.

Film critic B. E. Grey will be previewing films leading up to the Eastern Oregon Film Festival, Oct. 17-19 in

La Grande.

For more information, or to purchase festival passes, visit eofilmfest.com.