The Fabelmans (available on VOD sites like Amazon Prime Video) is Steven Spielberg at his Steven Spielbergiest. And how – the film is a fictionalized account of his adolescence, when he fell in love with filmmaking, growing up behind the camera as his family moved across the country and his parents’ marriage fell apart and he kissed a girl and was bullied by creeps at school and felt incredibly Jewish the entire time. And to answer your question, yes, this is one of those films about films that movie fans tend to enjoy, with one essential distinction: Steven Spielberg directed it.
In New Jersey in 1952, there is a line outside a theater playing The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryeon Francis DeFord) is approximately five or six years old. He will watch his first film, but he is terrified. Doesn’t want to go. It requires some persuasion from his parents, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano): “Movies are dreams you’ll never forget,” Mitzi adds, and it succeeds. Obviously, it works. Someone must mature in order to create Schindler’s List, Jaws, and Jurassic Park. Sammy stares in wonder as the big show flashes on the screen in front of him, including a train-crash sequence that traumatizes him. The view. The noise. The aggression. The FILMS.
It’s Hanukkah. Sammy requests Christmas lights as a gift, which causes his parents to chuckle. Then he requests a train set, which is more church-friendly. He intends to recreate the Greatest Show on Earth railway derailment. It shocks him. In fact, it jolts the entire home. His father instructs him on the importance of caring for his toys, but his mother understands why he did it; thus, a dynamic is established: artists vs scientists. This explanation is concise, but it works. Mitzi is a concert pianist who abandoned her career to have a family, whereas Burt is an electrical engineer. Clearly, Sammy is on the Artists team. Mitzi assists Sammy in re-enacting the train accident, but this time he will film it using Burt’s movie camera so that Sammy can see it repeatedly and overcome his trauma. Sometimes you just must face your fears.
Sammy currently has two younger sisters, soon to be three. Sammy enjoys producing movies with his rowdy and vivid family, wrapping his sisters in toilet paper to resemble mummies and staging dentist-chair horrors with ketchup as blood. Burt finds a job in Arizona, and Sammy forces him to stop the car so that he may film the family pulling into the driveway. Now that Sammy is older, he is portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle, a Boy Scout who earns his AV patch by producing lavish films featuring troop members. Everyone crowds into the theatre for the movies, with Burt gazing in astonishment and Mitzi grinning broadly as the lights flicker on their faces. Do the lights flicker with enchantment? Yes, they flicker enchantmentably. How could they not be enchanted? Mitzi’s eccentric uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), who works in the entertainment industry, arrives at the house one day to deliver a lecture on the agonies Sammy would endure in pursuit of his art and vision. Identical to his mother.
I haven’t mentioned Bennie (Seth Rogen). I probably ought to. He is Burt’s closest companion, a coworker with no family to speak of. They relocate from New Jersey to Phoenix. He is among the crowd for Sammy’s movie. He is accompanying the Fabelman family on their camping trip. He is seen in the background in one of Sammy’s pictures holding Mitzi’s hand; she leans in too near to Bennie. It is enough to convince Sammy to temporarily abandon filmmaking. Someone, after all, had to create E.T., Raiders, Private Ryan, Close Encounters, Duel, etc. Soon, they leave for Burt’s new work in Northern California, without Bennie. Mitzi is quite depressed, so she acquires a monkey as a pet. Sammy is currently a senior in high school, and the lads there dislike Jewish people. Burt and Mitzi’s marriage becomes increasingly tenuous. Sammy’s path to becoming the greatest living filmmaker in 2022 was impeded by many obstacles, but he was also aided by many of them.
What Films Does It Recall? : Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is a strikingly comparable nostalgia-heavy (mainly) autobiographical drama with winking embellishments. Richard Linklater and Alfonso Cuarón attempted similar things with their films Roma and Apollo 1012, although with less focus on the impact of the films.
Performance Deserving of Viewing: Williams is rapidly accumulating awards season honors – a Golden Globe nomination and an almost certain sixth Oscar nomination – and for good reason. It is a grandly empathic depiction of a flawed character, complete with voice affectations and a number of substantial emotional sequences. When she appears on the screen, your eyes are immediately drawn to her.
Grandmother Fabelman (Jeannie Berlin) disapproves of some pets in the home:
Grandmother, according to my rabbi in New Jersey, a monkey in the home is not kosher.
Mitzi: Therefore, we will not consume him.
Skin and Sexuality: None.
The Fabelmans is witty and engaging, wide-eyed and sage, and filled with comedy and melancholy. It appears Spielberg – who co-wrote the screenplay with frequent collaborator Tony Kushner (Munich, Lincoln) – is attempting to avoid being self-indulgent by downplaying the films-are-magic-and-they-made-me-who-I-am theme, and it succeeds. We do not require yet another glorification of the Greatest Art Form (see: Mank, The Artist). Spielberg unavoidably inserts fetishistic scenes in which Sam Fabelman splices and edits celluloid and finds immense joy in cuddling up to a ratcheting camera like Linus Van Pelt to his security blanket. This is unavoidable; it is essential to the plot.
Spielberg has earned the right to be publicly self-reflective, as he fashioned the modern blockbuster by producing immensely successful pictures while keeping major artistic integrity. The Fabelmans resembles a haphazardly organized, episodic memoir, with Spielberg amplifying the humorous components and toning down the melodrama. His estimations of tone are spot-on, and the film comes across as fun but never superficial. He appears to be looking back on his life with a well-honed balance of amusement and reflection, fueled by a greater understanding of his parents’ character strengths and flaws – his profoundly overworked father’s deep-seated kindness, and his mother’s compromises and subsequent psychological struggles.
Importantly, the film is friendly and inclusive. Spielberg brings us in and surprises us with the closeness of the story. His art has been predominantly populist, as evidenced by a number of pivotal scenes: A confrontational dinner scene that rivals the finest. When Sam confronts Mitzi about her adultery, a sad moment ensues. Sam makes a sad prayer on the floor of his vociferously Christian female classmate – “Hello, Jesus, my name is Sam Fabelman” – in the hopes that it will lead to a makeout session. Mitzi tosses her children into the car and pursues a tornado in a violent scenario. And it is all laced with laughter and suffering, with the former predominating over the latter.
Sam learns what filmmaking is all about through his artistic accomplishments and personal tragedies, which are connected in a meaningful manner. Telling the truth or concealing it. There are both large and little feelings. Decoration and simplicity. Capturing and bringing us into a scenario. Bringing the interior to the surface All of that And the picture ends with an elegantly calibrated wink, the only moment Spielberg seems self-aware; he’s just too smart to produce a film about itself and itself alone. That is not particularly persuasive. But Spielberg, the man, is without question.
Our Request: STREAM IT. The Fabelmans is a frequently charming and emotional reflection on an artist’s life, and it helps us comprehend why, how, and for whom Spielberg creates films.
John Serba is a film reviewer and freelance writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan. More of his art can be seen at johnserbaatlarge.com.