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Steven Spielberg‘s The Fabelmans is a beautiful, emotionally engaging film. But contrary to what people say, I don’t believe it’s a film about film. I don’t think Spielberg intended to make a film about himself making films and where he drew the inspiration from. But what I do think is that, in his own way helped by his wingman Tony Kushner, he tells us how his career is so important in regards to the emotional effect of what he does. It’s a sort of a riddle that perhaps you’ll never solve because he doesn’t want you to. Instead of giving yet another of his interviews, he adapts his own story about what made him the man he is today. Not the director, but the man.
We know about his life. We all saw the documentary. Sammy is based on him, and his early love for motion pictures, ever since his parents took him to see Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Greatest Show on Earth. Days after he was still crashing toy trains trying to recreate what he saw in theaters. This grew into an almost toxic relationship with the need to document everything and applying an artistic touch to the daily routine of his Jewish family, consisting of a piano teacher and a working-class engineer whose company moved around too much. On a camping trip, Sammy shoots and shoots, and when he edits the film he comes upon a family secret that scars him forever and estranges him from the dynamics of his family.
Does he then become the King Midas of Hollywood? Absolutely not. Sammy is Sammy. He’s not Steven and you won’t see anything resembling his career on The Fabelmans. This is not how he intends to tell his own story about trauma and the inability to understand love isn’t always everything. If there’s a point where the film becomes a divisive piece, this is it. In fact, the only link to reality itself and Spielberg’s presence in Hollywood is a final scene that will leave you with a smirk. But that’s it. This is not a homage to himself, Indy, E.T. or dinosaurs.
The Fabelmans is a movie about the power of films of course, but the films that you actually put together yourself to display an image of your ideal family nucleus. Before observing the truth about his mother, Sammy’s motivation was huge and everlasting, but then he’s shrouded in darkness and anxiety. His only way to scream at the world is through a powerful war film he made with his buddies. No one saw that footage and thought that Sammy was going to change the world. But they saw his relationship with film, and knew something magical would spawn from that. It’s like Tarantino says “you don’t need schools. If your passion for film is real, you will find yourself drawn and forced to making a good film”.
This is not the best Spielberg film ever. But it’s probably his most important film in decades because of how intimate and emotionally relevant it is. Again, The Fabelmans has a secret in it and it’s not easy to find it. Part of the adventure is trying to find that key element that makes him what he is today. If it were that easy, there would be more like him, and you and I know that’s impossible because this kind of magic will never be repeated.
Founder of Screentology. Member of the OFCS. RT Certified Critic
Dog dad.
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– Armessa Movie News