Ah, Mr. Spielberg, we meet again, around the same time as we did last year – with you ramping up West Side Story to 11, which didn’t sit well with me, although it was technically masterful. At least The Fabelmans should be original, and potentially autobiographical, utilising more grounded nostalgia. And if I wasn’t harboring teeny-tiny niggling concerns on the mental attitudes of our most established directors these days (thanks to West Side Story, and James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water), then this movie would appear right up my alley. At the risk of sounding arrogantly self-absorbed – win me back, baby!
Young Sammy Fabelman (played in early scenes by Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord, and then predominately by Gabriel LaBelle) sees his first movie on the big screen; The Greatest Show on Earth, which features a scene with a train crash that scares the wits out of him. Sam asks for a train set for Hanukkah as a means to understand and overcome his fears, but when his father Burt (Paul Dano) is afraid he’ll break the model trains by crashing them, his mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams) suggests he should only crash them one more time but film it, so he can watch it over and over again. From this, the technical and whimsical possibilities of filmmaking open up, and flourish in Sam’s mind. He begins to make all types of movies with his friends and sisters, and shows them off at school. Meanwhile, Sam is becoming a young man. His family are moving around a lot for Burt’s work, and Mitzi tries to find the light in dark circumstances of the heart, whilst continuing to be Sam’s biggest supporter.
Just looking it up to confirm and The Fabelmans is indeed a semi-autobiographical look at Steven Spielberg’s own childhood. You are in for a treat, as the way The Fabelmans portrays many of its story elements is a sheer masterclass in how to get the most out of every moment, creating an absolutely excellent film. As a coming-of-age story, much of what this movie is doing isn’t uncommon, but the movie accomplishes a measured intensity in getting to the core of any and all emotion in each scene, elevating everything, and especially the family’s subdued quarrels. I love me some good subtext, and I could possibly remark on each scene – I adore that at Sam’s discovery of his mother’s misgivings, he doesn’t seem to have the words or emotional intelligence to be able to compute his feelings, so, he shows her a cut of the scandalous camping footage hidden away within the metaphoric secrecy of the bedroom closet. The Fabelmans finds a great balance of characters, after I worried for a time that the sister characters would be mere background filler. But the movie ends up using Sam’s spectacled sister Reggie (Julia Butters) to provide the adolescent feminine perspective in certain situations, which should keep Elizabeth Banks happy for a while 😬 Obviously, I’m joking, but it’s still at great credit to the movie that it rounds out what’s happening from multiple perspectives, and I’m glad the movie includes these insights. More on this, is how the Aryan school bully gets mad at Sam’s beach movie because it makes him look too perfect, and I can only extrapolate from that scene an acknowledgement from the director that films can create a false sense of reality, or at least an unrealistic standard to look up to, which is a refreshing insertion, in a movie about film too.
I was pleasantly surprised by newcomer Gabriel LaBelle in the lead role as Sam, but Michelle Williams is the shining star. For this movie set in the sixties, I could never stop seeing Williams channeling Shirley MacLaine for this performance – I even stopped to look up if the two actresses were related, thinking I may’ve missed some ancestry link that was common-knowledge to everyone but me, but no. I don’t profess to know Williams’ entire filmography, but I know she is a talent, that I remember fondly from Manchester by the Sea and The Greatest Showman, but I’d be glad if she had The Fabelmans to point to as her ultimate work. This is basically her movie, as the most dominant force of the Fabelman family, always pulling focus. But if I was asked to answer whether I liked Paul Dano in his role though, then I would have to say no. He’s not as blank as Ansel Elgort in West Side Story, so don’t worry folks, but you see, where Williams feels like a product straight out of the era, I always felt like you can see Dano thinking to remember to be stiff, as he plays this button-up pragmatic businessman, thinking too literally to sense the mood around him. I also noticed how Spielberg, at least twice, films Dano with a dominant shadow looming behind him, illustrating to me that either Burt hasn’t integrated his instinctual and practical senses of self, or they are in conflict, and Burt probably knows why his wife is unhappy deep down where he can’t accept it. In the end, Dano does enough with Burt for him to still be an interesting character, and we like Paul Dano, so I can’t begrudge him being a part of this movie, fantastic as it is.
Seth Rogan was probably born to play a fun uncle, and made me ponder for the first time if he might be fit to play an Uncle Fester in a live-action ‘Addams Family one of these days – would that be cool? And one of the best suggestions my good friend has ever made to me was that we enter the world of Twin Peaks at the news there would be a Twin Peaks: The Return, which opened me up to an abstract style of storytelling never before seen – so it was quite nice to see David Lynch portray the best director as Spielberg saw it as a young age, John Ford, who is possibly an idol for Lynch as well.
If anything, the movie can be a little too polished and clean, and while it’s rife with quotable lines, it sometimes feels like its primary achievement is a neat double-play on words to button the action. It’s also a life in fast forward, which is good to remember, picking out the ups and downs of the human condition at their richest moments. And It’s not always easy to have such a long lens on growing up until you’re a filmmaker – see, I can do the dual-meaning words thingy too 😏 I thought the movie’s hard cuts might get a bit annoying, but they dry up after Sam ages up, and I don’t remember one from the second half of the movie. The family name ‘Fabelman’ is a little on the nose too; because Spielberg is a fable-man, get it?! But I can wrap my arms around it, and embrace the alias for what it is, which is deliberately coy. I’m a big fan of autobiographical movies that give themselves the space to play around the edges, and what I mean is I like this movie more for calling the main character ‘Sam Fabelman’, where a little Steven Spielberg in the trailers and posters may’ve have been more marketable, but promised rigid accuracy to avoid criticism – since a driving theme of this movie is art, I think it’s imperative that this movie be an artist’s rendition itself. I also applaud how the movie approaches Judaism, and seems to want to cherish outward and quirky expressionism in people, from Sam’s mum to Sam’s girlfriend Monica (Chloe East), at least until things fall apart.
Bravo, Spielberg – as one of the best film directors in human history, I’m happiest when I’m on your side. I started to challenge myself back in COVID-lockdowns with completing Spielberg’s entire catalogue, but I didn’t get very far, although I’d love to know where this movie sits for me among his best. Right now, in this moment, The Fabelmans would be near the top – it’s a movie I’m really grateful to have seen. An exemplary credit to the practice.
5.0
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