The Fabelmans (2022)

Review

151min

Genre:       Drama

Director:     Steven Spielberg

Cast:         Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano…and more

Writers:     Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner

-Synopsis-

In post war suburban America, a boy with big dreams is beguiled by the magic of the pictures and nurtured by his free-spirited mother to become a storyteller himself, as he struggles with family drama and his straight-laced scientific father while trying to fit in with his peers, in this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tribute to films and dreams from a giant of modern cinema.

When Steven Spielberg dedicated his 1994 Academy Award triumphs for ‘Schindler’s List’ to his mother in the audience, and his 1999 directorial Oscar win for ‘Saving Private Ryan’ to his watching father, we got a glimpse of the importance of his parents and their marriage in shaping him as a filmmaker and as a man. Now one of Hollywood’s most revered and successful professional dream-makers joins a recent trend of celebrated directors like Alfonso Cuarón, Kenneth Branagh and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, looking back at the people and experiences which made him by telling a very intimate semi-autobiographical tale which touches the heart—and has plenty of it too—giving us his very personal ode to dreamers and the power of cinema.

Mateo Zoryan and Gabriel LaBelle star as child and teenage ‘Sammy Fabelman’, a typical movie-loving American kid growing up with his sisters in boom-era USA in a middle-class Jewish family led by his very practical engineer father ‘Burt’ (Paul Dano) and his artistic and impulsive pianist mother ‘Mitzi’ (Michelle Williams), buoyed by jovial family friend and adoptive uncle ‘Bennie’ (Seth Rogen). But their relatively idyllic suburban existence is soon complicated by relocations, personal loss, and complications in the marriage, as Sammy struggles to fit in at new schools and is caught between the very different personalities and diverging paths of his parents, and between artistic passion and familial duty—with his filmmaking destiny hanging in the balance, but also fuelled by his experiences and the people around him.

Despite it being essentially a lyrical chronicle of the early days of Steven Spielberg, ‘The Fabelmans’ is truly a film 75 years in the making, requiring a lifetime of personal and professional experiences for the great director to come to terms with who he is and where he came from, and share that with the world in true Spielbergian style. Yet as much as this is a very personal and thinly disguised period biopic, it’s also a classic Hollywood coming-of-age drama, full of heart and humour but also pathos and poignancy and more than a bit of the hope and wonder which was once the American way—not to mention a Spielberg signature—while injected with timely yet timeless social themes of racism and antisemitism, bullying, adultery and divorce, relocation, unfulfilled ambition, mental health and trauma.

‘The Fabelmans’ sees Spielberg in fine period film form, exquisitely re-creating the middle-class America of the 1950s and early 60s with fine production designs which capture the essence of suburban New Jersey, Arizona and California, all warmly photographed by Polish cinematographer and regular collaborator Janusz Kaminski, but with an understandable added layer of memory which often directly reflects the work of the great director, using shot framing and set-ups deliberately reminiscent of scenes from everything like ‘E.T.’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ to ‘Saving Private Ryan’, or rather showing us where some of those images really came from.

Then of course there’s the power of the music to set the mood and heighten the drama, a task made simple when Spielberg has maestro John Williams to once again bring audial poetry to his dreams, this time creating a warm piano-led classical score which not only adds emotional atmosphere but also plays a key part in the narrative, somehow perfectly complemented by a select soundtrack of rock and pop tunes to take you back to the era.

In the end though this is Spielberg in peak reflective mode where the emotional touches are inevitably key as he crafts a very personal human story, which has the rare but appropriate distinction of being co-written by him, pouring into it loving but honest feelings towards his two very different parental figures and showing us that as a man and an artist he is the truly the product of his parents—a combination of engineer and imagineer who someone once described as the ultimate artist-industrialist of film.

The result is an earnest and touching but also funny and distinctly Jewish yet universally relatable family chronicle sprinkled with Hollywood fairy dust, but also his love letter to the movies and ode to the process of making them, from the magic on the screen to the hands-on work that gets it there, particularly during this era and his introduction to the craft. And to some seeing Spielberg get his first camera and what he does with it might be like Beethoven getting his first piano, or Pelé his first football.

Despite its masterful cinematic craftsmanship and undeniable style though, as a character piece ‘The Fabelmans’ will inevitably lean on its ensemble cast, which luckily holds up the film with ease. Led by young star Gabriel LaBelle playing a teenage version of Steven Spielberg through most of it in everything but name with grace, never stepping over the line into unnecessary melodrama but bringing plenty of heart, moxie and pathos to a sharp young outsider with dreams and vision but also plenty of self-doubt and growing pains—an American everyman with a gift who would make an unforgettable mark on our culture.

The heart of the film though, and the people to whom it is a tribute is undoubtedly the Spielberg family—with all their very human flaws, virtues, and foibles—in particular his parents whom the writer/director treats with love but also honesty and a questioning eye, but ultimately with empathy and understanding. Both beautifully brought to life by splendidly soulful turns from Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, while plenty of others in the ensemble supporting cast get their chance to steal a scene, with the likes of Judd Hirsch as a madcap uncle and unlikely muse taking full advantage, not to mention David Lynch’s unexpected cameo as a cinema titan, dispensing some of the most hilariously memorable movie wisdom in recent memory.

While it may amount to a finely balanced and masterfully crafted early life story of Steven Spielberg, leaving us at the cusp of his effective entry into the industry and artform he has re-defined over his long and storied fifty-year-plus career, ‘The Fabelmans’ is truly his baby—taking a lifetime of experiences and reflection to be born . . . but luckily this bundle of joy and heartache was clearly worth the wait.

The Bottom Line…

A blend of classic American frank coming-of-age story and very personal cinematic family portrait with plenty of pathos but also humour and moxie, mixed with a beguiling ode to cinema and everyman rumination on a young artist in the making, ‘The Fabelmans’ unsurprisingly proves to be Steven Spielberg’s most intimate and human film to date, a lovingly crafted and relatable cinematic time capsule of a family that’s full of heart and wonderment.

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