The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg has said that all of his films are personal in some way, and contain a part of him or his beliefs.  His 34th feature, The Fabelmans, is a semi-autobiographical love letter to cinema in general, and is based not just on his own childhood and experiences, but on the growth and pain that his entire family endured.

Unlike a lot of projects in which the filmmaker or writer reflects on their own past, this is not a self-centered piece, seen through the eyes of the young hero meant to represent the artist telling the story.  It is a sweeping drama that covers a number of subjects, and winds up not just being a coming of age story, but also a drama of a family struggling to hold itself together through change.  Such changes include the brilliant engineer father of the family Burt (Paul Dano), whose growing success forces the family to move on more than one occasion, which creates tension within the family in more ways than one.  It also covers a change within the young hero's mother, Mitzi (a wonderful Michelle Williams), who despite never losing her love for her husband and children, finds herself pulled in a different direction than the man she is married to.

All of this is seen through the eyes of a boy named Sammy (played as a child by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) , who is supposed to represent Spielberg as a child.  When we first see him, his parents take him to his first movie at the theater, which ends up being Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth.  Sammy is instantly engrossed, and perhaps a bit terrified, by the entire experience.  A scene within the film depicting a train wreck is of particular fascination to him, and it begins a life-long obsession.  He starts with attempting to recreate the sequence with a toy train set he receives for Hanukkah.  And while his father forbids him to wreck his toy train, his mother secretly allows him to film it with the family's movie camera, so that he can revisit and watch it whenever he desires.  This creates an early contrast between how his parents both view his love of film.  While Burt is supportive of Sammy's desire to make movies, he calls it a "hobby".  Mitzi, meanwhile, knows something about artistic passion, being a skilled pianist who could have been great if given the chance.

As Sammy grows to a teen (now played by Gabriel LaBelle), he begins enlisting his sisters and his friends into making short, homemade movies, and creating clever effects, such as punching small holes in the film at the right moments during editing in order to create a "spark" effect to represent guns firing when he makes a Western.  And while the film is mainly focused on Sammy's coming of age story of dealing with his burgeoning dreams of filmmaking and prejudice due to his Jewish family background, this is ultimately the family's story, and that's what sets it apart.  The Fabelmans is a movie with the right title, as each member of the family plays a key role in the story, from his sisters who usually end up playing roles in his homemade movies (he wraps them up in toilet paper to play mummies in a horror film), to close family friend "Uncle" Bennie (Seth Rogen), who creates a lasting impact in Sammy's life in more ways than one.

These are characters who come across as having actual lives and interests outside of the main story centered on Sammy's film pursuits.  Part of why this is such a rewarding drama is that it's not a personal glimpse at the filmmaker as a young man, but because everyone who surrounds him is such a well developed and fleshed out personality.  Even the local bully who harasses Sammy at school ends up being so much more than he initially appears in a crucial and powerful scene late in the film.  This is ultimately a story about both finding your place in the world, as well as how finding that place can sometimes mean the people closest to you have to go their separate ways.  It's a mature film, with a sensational screenplay provided by Spielberg and frequent collaborator Tony Kushner that gives ample attention to both the triumphs and the failings of these individual characters.

Spielberg has stated that The Fabelmans is not completely based on his own family, but everything here has a ring of truth, and the honesty of closely examining where you came from.  It's a highly entertaining and enriching film, and stands among the best of the year, and easily one of the most powerful films the director has worked on lately.

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