I've watched Steven Spielberg films my entire life, know an awful lot about his background already from articles and documentaries, and feel primed to enjoy this movie in a way that most people aren't. So, I'm heavily biased in favor of liking "The Fabelmans," Steven Spielberg's lightly fictionalized dramatization of his youth, serving as his origin story as a filmmaker. I'm honestly a little worried that I'm too biased to give any kind of useful commentary here.
This feels like a film that Spielberg has been trying to make for some time, with its hero worship of John Ford, and its nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s. However, what elevates the film above a trip down memory lane or an exercise in self-mythologizing, is that it spends the bulk of the running time on the disintegrating marriage of Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams). Their son Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord as a child, Gabriel Labelle as a teenager) is the Spielberg stand-in, a budding director who is putting together his own elaborate productions by the time he's in his teens. As Sammy learns the art of shooting, editing, and manipulating film, he also begins to pick up on his mother's unhappiness, and his father's denial.
The film follows the Fabelmans through several eventful years, and relocations from New Jersey to Arizona, and later to California. Until the California section, the plot is very incidental, only touching on the big moments and events in Sammy's life - a camping trip, film shoots, and special visits. Memorable characters like Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) will show up out of the blue for a couple of scenes, and move on. Seth Rogen provides a lot of energy as Burt's best friend Bennie. Chloe East is a scene stealer as Sammy's high school girlfriend Monica. David Lynch shows up at the end to play a character I will not spoil, for a scene that is my absolute favorite thing I've seen in a movie all year. It helps keep the audience on their toes, not knowing what or who is going to appear onscreen next.
The anchors of the cast, however, are Paul Dano and Michelle Williams. LaBelle does a great job as Sammy, but Burt and Mitzi have to be these idealized, yet very human parental figures, and the film only works because Dano and Williams do such beautiful work. You can see the cinematography and tone of the film change over time as Sammy matures, and learns to see his parents as real, flawed people. Likewise, Burt and Mitzi become more and more complex, and their relationships with Sammy change significantly. "The Fabelmans" feels like the culmination of all those other Spielberg films about parent/child difficulties, and the director is definitely working through his own feelings about his parents, both now deceased. Ultimately there's sympathy for both Burt and Mitzi, and an acceptance of their decisions that perhaps is only possible at the end, from an adult perspective.
That's not to say that the film is all serious family melodrama. "The Fabelmans" is much funnier and more entertaining than I was expecting. The depictions of amateur filmmaking in particular are great, giddy fun. However, I appreciate that the film isn't about the actual act of filmmaking to the same extent as something like "Super 8" is. More emphasis is placed on examining the creative impulse and the unintended consequences of creating art. Likewise, Sammy deals with antisemitism when the family moves to California, but this is only one aspect of his difficult transition to a new environment, and not treated as one of the major themes of the story. There's also a little bit of winking at the audience, especially with the final shot.
Longtime Spielberg fans like me will get more out of the film than those who aren't. The references to his other work aren't obvious, but they're there. However, it's still perfectly accessible for general audiences, and might even have been a crowd pleaser under the right circumstances. Best of all, "The Fabelmans" feels like Spielberg is really striving for something unique and personal in a way that he hasn't in a very long time. After this and "West Side Story," we're definitely seeing Spielberg in a creative resurgence, and I can only hope it lasts.
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