The Fabelmans
With his most personal film to date, Steven Spielberg explores his childhood with an evocative, semi-autobiographical hymn to the cinema.
Meet the Fabelmans: Paul Dano, Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen
Following on from Empire of Light and Babylon, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans makes a decent leg of a cinephilic tripod. However, it is neither the tale of a movie theatre or Hollywood’s cauldron of decadence, but the deeply personal story of the formation of a major filmmaker. It’s less about the cinema per se than the bricks and mortar that made up the emotional foundations of the movie’s own director. Drawing from Spielberg’s most personal memories, the film displays an intimacy and emotional resonance that burrows deep beneath the skin. And at once both affectionate and playful, it also unveils a darkness that was to mould the adult sensibility of the man-child who went on to unleash so many celluloid monsters onto an unsuspecting public.
As to be expected from a craftsman like Spielberg, The Fabelmans is a beautiful thing to behold, superbly lit, framed and acted. This alone guarantees the viewer a period of quality in the dark where, in the words of Fabelman Snr, the cinema produces, “happy things like light from a huge flashlight.” It’s a simpler summation of what the poetic projectionist reveals in Empire of Light (played by Toby Jones), but then Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano) is not a man of words, proving more adept with a screwdriver and a mainframe. Spielberg – or Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) as he is here – inherited his artistic side from his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), a free spirit and frustrated concert pianist. And to be an accomplished filmmaker, both an understanding of the craft and the art are virtually essential.
The Fabelmans starts with a trip to the cinema where, in 1952, a young Sammy (Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord) is coaxed into a darkened auditorium to witness the epic train crash in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. It is a life-changing moment and Sammy’s obsession with trains makes way for a fixation with his father’s 8mm camera. The teenage Sammy’s resourceful ingenuity comes to the fore with his home movies, in which he recreates a stagecoach robbery and later a bloody World War II battle, foreshadowing the director’s own Saving Private Ryan.
But in between these creative bursts, Spielberg focuses on his family’s domestic dynamic, in which his father’s workaholism clashes with his mother’s emotional changeability. There are some domestic longueurs, which might mean more to Spielberg than his audience, but they are so exquisitely rendered that the running time doesn’t feel a pinch too far. Besides, it provides a balance for the more dramatic scenes later on, when the cracks in the family idyll start to show. Thanks considerably to Michelle Williams’ Oscar-nominated performance as Mitzi and the canny plotting of Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s script, the film’s darker emotions prove suitably disturbing. Besides, The Fabelmans is a full minute shorter than The Greatest Show on Earth.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Gabriel LaBelle, Jeannie Berlin, David Lynch, Judd Hirsch, Julia Butters, Sam Rechner, Robin Bartlett, Keeley Karsten, Oakes Fegley, Chloe East, Isabelle Kusman, Sophia Kopera, Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord, Birdie Borria, Alina Brace, James Urbaniak, Greg Grunberg.
Dir Steven Spielberg, Pro Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, Screenplay Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, Ph Janusz Kamiński, Pro Des Rick Carter, Ed Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar, Music John Williams, Costumes Mark Bridges, Sound Gary Rydstrom, Dialect coach Liz Himelstein.
Amblin Entertainment/Reliance Entertainment-Entertainment One.
151 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 11 November 2022. UK Rel: 27 January 2023. Cert. 12A.
