Spielberg’s The Fabelmans tells an intimate family story through the magic of film
Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is optimistic, somewhat dreamy, and a testament to the magic of movies.
Starring: Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch
Autobiographies almost always filter out hard truths and embellish them with a more comforting memory. Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical drama, The Fabelmans, also rewrites his memories in this emotional film, capturing influences from his early life that moulded him as a filmmaker.
The key part that editing plays in any story emerges in his sensitive treatment of a family that falls apart over time. The Fabelmans is optimistic, somewhat dreamy, and a testament to the magic of movies.
Calling Steven Spielberg an auteur—or the most successful filmmaker of his time—is to understate his impact on cinema. Sammy Fabelman, a Jewish kid who wants Christmas lights as a Hanukkah present, shows his young impressionable self recreating a train crash sequence from Cecil B DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth with a toy train and a home camera.
Young Sammy Fabelman finds his mother Mitzi’s (Michelle Williams) support in his attempts to make films. His father, Burt (Paul Dano), indulges him and buys him expensive filmmaking equipment, but wants him to aspire to make something that people can use as he does as a prolific electrical engineer.
Sammy inherits a solution-oriented approach from his father and a capacity to imagine wildly from his mother, Mitzi, who has given up on her ambitions to become a concert pianist as she raises four kids.
Mitzi’s struggle is not evident; Michelle Williams has imbued this performance with consciously putting on happiness and impulsiveness. She tries to make regular moments fun for her family. Sometimes, she goes a bit too far—like driving the kids and herself to chase a tornado.
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When the family has to move to Arizona for Burt’s new job at GE, Mitzi demands that Burt get his best friend, Bennie (Seth Rogen), along. Her insistence on Bennie being part of their move shows the first discomfort in their marriage.
Always around the family for lunches and by their side during vacations, a young Sammy—now a boy scout and a popular home movies director—discovers Mitzi’s affections for Bennie through his camera.
He edits two versions of a camping trip. The first shows a happy family, where an impromptu ballet in a see-through nightie by Mitzi concludes the story on a bewitched note. The second shows her stolen moments of closeness with Bennie.
Sammy confronts his mother, revealing the organic emotional conflict that marks his familial memories from here on. The family is uprooted again when they move to California with Bert’s new job.
Sammy’s evolution as a filmmaker—one who can reinterpret unhappy experiences like school bullying and anti-semitism with cinematic technique—shows that films are his true calling and genuine source of happiness.
Steven Spielberg’s ability to draw heartfelt performances from young adults and children is evident in this movie again. Gabriel LaBelle as the adolescent Sammy is brilliant. His ability to deal with life’s shattering truths through filmmaking is developed patiently through the 2 hours 31 minutes, convincing the viewer what it took to inspire this legendary filmmaker (Spielberg).
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Raising kids, keeping a family together, and staying on course as a couple can take a toll on a marriage, and, in turn, can impact the kids in a life-changing manner. This experience underlines Sammy’s journey into the movies with touches of humour and growing-up pains.
When maternal uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) comes to visit with stories of working in the circus and films, Sammy discovers that his mother’s ambitions to become a pianist never took off.
A tad bit crazy and cantankerous, he makes Sammy realise that his love for the camera exceeds his attachment to family and regular life.
A funny scene where young Sammy meets his lifelong hero Hollywood star John Ford (played by David Lynch in a cameo), he discovers that a lot of cinema’s biggest moments are opportunistic happenings rather than well-thought-out pieces of art.
Bringing the film to a hopeful conclusion, it focuses on the conflict and triumph of art over life and family.
The Fabelmans is long and, therefore, a patient watch. It is an ode to the evolution of Hollywood as a dream factory through the intimate story of a family’s struggle.
In signature Spielberg form, The Fabelmans is accessible and heartwarming. For those who love movies, this film is a must-watch.
Rating: 4/5
Edited by Suman Singh