THE FABELMANS (2022)
Updated: Feb 19, 2023
An Iconic Director Brings His Past to the Present
Grade: A+
Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is a beautiful, sad, and insightful film. It is one of the best movies of the year, and quite possibly one of the best of the director’s entire career. Combining the pains of familial turmoil with the wide-eyed optimism of a budding artist, it is a rare example of how a movie’s excessive runtime doesn’t detract from the experience but enhances it. All of Spielberg’s movies are personal to some degree, but The Fabelmans may be the most personal of them all, largely because it is based upon his own life.
The stand-in for Spielberg in The Fabelmans is Sammy (played by Gabriel LaBelle as a teenager), the only son of the titular family. The film opens with a scene straight out of Spielberg’s youth, as a young Sammy accompanies his father Burt (Paul Dano) and his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) to see his first movie, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Burt explains in detail how movies work to his young son, while Mitzi describes them as dreams-a clever way of setting up their personalities.
This scene lays the groundwork for Sammy’s talent for filmmaking, as he is terrified by the train crash in the movie and wants to recreate it on film in order to have control. The first act focuses on Sammy’s relationship with his parents, in particular his piano player mother, who is impressed by her son’s imagination, as opposed to his computer engineer father, who sees it mainly as a hobby.
As he grows older, and the family moves to Arizona, Sammy’s talent and ambition grow. The movies he makes with his Boy Scout friends in the desert outside of town are entertaining to watch, and his efforts to make them look real illustrate Spielberg’s innovative nature, which would ultimately change the motion picture industry. Sammy’s uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), who had himself worked in the film industry in the late 1920s, tells him that his love for his family and the movies can tear him apart.
Boris’s warning proves prophetic as, while editing a film he shot of a family camping trip, Sammy discovers his mother has been having an affair with Burt’s friend, Benny (Seth Rogen). This is directly inspired by the most shattering event in Spielberg’s life, when his parents unexpectedly divorced. It was because of his mother, who had a similar affair with one of her husbands’ friends, although the young Spielberg would hold his father responsible for years for what happened.
This devastating event furthers Sammy’s (and Spielberg’s) desire for control, as does the merciless bullying Sammy faces from his antisemitic peers at school. He may not hold any sway over what happens in real life, but he can decide what happens in his movies. Yet sometimes movies can affect reality-and Sammy ultimately gains the respect of one of his bullies after showing him in a good light in a film he made for the school.
Spielberg makes just about everyone sympathetic, bringing out the best in his talented cast. Williams is especially impressive as Mitzi, perfectly conveying her character's joy, grief and guilt. And Dano’s final scene is quite bittersweet as his character looks at a picture sent by his ex-wife and ultimately makes it clear that he will support his son no matter what. The film’s greatest discovery is LaBelle, who only starred in a handful of movies before this one. The grief that Sammy endures throughout his life is devastating, and LaBelle helps us to feel it. The story played out by the actors is amazingly complemented by incredible cinematography by longtime Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski. Lights give off the soft bounce that the cinematographer uses frequently, and many outdoor shots look like they are a Polaroid come to life.
One of the greatest feats a long movie can achieve is making its audience glad it was so long. Watching The Fabelmans, I was occasionally looking at my watch-not because I was waiting for it to end, but because I didn’t want it to end. I really liked these characters and the emotional story they lived. A few scenes were a little too intense for me (such as the scene where Sammy visits a devout Christian girl in her home), but the sheer emotional power of the movie makes up for them. Spielberg has often been accused of being too manipulative with how emotional his movies are, but for The Fabelmans it is only appropriate, providing incredible insight into his past. The Fabelmans proves not only that Spielberg is still going strong, but also that, even today, the film industry is still able to produce movies with the power to move and inspire.
One final note: the film wasn't playing in nearly as many theaters near me as some other recent big releases. This suggests that the distributors don’t have a lot of faith in it, and it therefore may not do very well at the box office. Which is a shame, since movies like The Fabelmans deserve to be seen on the big screen. They deserve to be successful.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner
Producers: Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner
Cast: Michelle Williams (Mitzi Schildkraut-Fabelman), Paul Dano (Burt Fabelman), Seth Rogen (Bennie Loewy), Judd Hirsch (Boris Schildkraut), Gabriel LaBelle (Sammy Fabelman), Julia Butters (Reggie Fabelman), Keely Karsten (Natalie Fabelman), Sophia Kopera (Lisa Fabelman), Jeannie Berlin (Haddash Fabelman), Robin Bartlett (Tina Schildkraut)
Rated: PG-13 (for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and dug use)
Comments