Practically everything that Steven Spielberg has directed, from his 1971 made-for-TV psychological thriller DUEL to his 2021 re-imagining of WEST SIDE STORY, has had a personal resonance for him in some way or another. But his new film THE FABELMANS is quite a different animal altogether. This one is Personal in the most naked definition of that term, as he turns his camera more or less on his own peripatetic upbringing, starting with his first movie-going experience as a five year-old in Camden, New Jersey in 1952, going through his formative years as the family moves first to Arizona and then to Northern California, and finishing up with his first up-close encounter with Hollywood directing royalty in 1965. It is a story that is arguably quite cinema-centric, but one that alludes to things that too many kids went through during the conformist years of the 1950's and early 1960's, and things that too many kids of Jewish ancestry like Spielberg had to put up with.
As portrayed by Mateo Zayan in his very early years, Sammy Fabelman becomes excited (though also fairly terrified) with his first encounter with the art of movies via the 1952 Cecil B. DeMille opus THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, which his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) take him to see at a cinema house in Camden, New Jersey. In those years, he borrows a motion picture camera to stage a mini version of that film's famous train wreck with his own train set. Then as the family moves out to Arizona, due to his father's expertise in the burgeoning technological explosion of the times, Sammy, henceforth played by Gabrielle LaBelle, gets downright serious. But through his little cinematic films of his family's Arizona adventures, he uncovers a very troubling secret that his mom has been keeping from the kids, one that involves close family friend Bennie Loewey (Seth Rogen). And once the family makes one more final move, this time to what would become known as Silicon Valley, not only do Williams and Dano start to split up, leaving LaBelle and his sisters to pick up the pieces, as a high school student in a largely WASP-ish community LaBelle encounters for the first time virulent anti-Semitism being aimed straight at him. Movie-making is his only real respite; and even then, he's not exactly sure whether he really wants to do it anymore--until that aforementioned first brush with a Hollywood directing legend of, how shall we say, some renown.
Co-written by Spielberg and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, THE FABELMANS is a moving film that's more than just about movies and the power to inspire one kid to take up this art form. It is about how he has to deal as a kid and then as a teenager morphing into an adult much sooner than he had ever expected with things that he had no way of controlling (let alone directing). It's one thing to go through those stages in what we used to call a "nuclear family" that is silently imploding, which far too many kids from the 1950's to this very day have had to do; but it is quite another matter when you're a kid trying to fit in a society that not only has no use for Jews but has this unfortunate tendency want to denigrate and destroy them. There are also quite a few amusing moments, as in the scenes in high school where LaBelle befriends a girl who tries to convert him from Judaism to Christianity (needless to say, that doesn't take), and his filming of his high school's hi-jinks on "Ditch Day" on the beach at Santa Cruz. LaBelle so accurately captures the triumphs and trauma of Spielberg's upbringing; and Williams, Dano, and Rogen are also incredibly good. Judd Hirsch has a ten-minute cameo role as Uncle Boris, who gives LaBelle some pointers about how art and love can tear a person in two, as it almost does to LaBelle.
So often in the past, Spielberg has been accused of being overtly sentimental and manipulative in some of his films, while being much too serious in others. But these charges are not very credible when it comes to those films; and they don't ring true when it comes to THE FABELMANS either. This is not only a personal film for Spielberg, it is eminently relatable to anyone who has had to go through the trauma of a family break-up and then to be bullied in school for the most petty and stupid reasons possible. Spielberg is a director of extraordinary ability, but he also believes in common people with common concerns and common dreams. In the end, THE FABELMANS hits very close to home when one thinks about it hard enough, and that's the kind of Hollywood art that Spielberg has engaged in for a half century-plus, to our everlasting benefit.
As portrayed by Mateo Zayan in his very early years, Sammy Fabelman becomes excited (though also fairly terrified) with his first encounter with the art of movies via the 1952 Cecil B. DeMille opus THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, which his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) take him to see at a cinema house in Camden, New Jersey. In those years, he borrows a motion picture camera to stage a mini version of that film's famous train wreck with his own train set. Then as the family moves out to Arizona, due to his father's expertise in the burgeoning technological explosion of the times, Sammy, henceforth played by Gabrielle LaBelle, gets downright serious. But through his little cinematic films of his family's Arizona adventures, he uncovers a very troubling secret that his mom has been keeping from the kids, one that involves close family friend Bennie Loewey (Seth Rogen). And once the family makes one more final move, this time to what would become known as Silicon Valley, not only do Williams and Dano start to split up, leaving LaBelle and his sisters to pick up the pieces, as a high school student in a largely WASP-ish community LaBelle encounters for the first time virulent anti-Semitism being aimed straight at him. Movie-making is his only real respite; and even then, he's not exactly sure whether he really wants to do it anymore--until that aforementioned first brush with a Hollywood directing legend of, how shall we say, some renown.
Co-written by Spielberg and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, THE FABELMANS is a moving film that's more than just about movies and the power to inspire one kid to take up this art form. It is about how he has to deal as a kid and then as a teenager morphing into an adult much sooner than he had ever expected with things that he had no way of controlling (let alone directing). It's one thing to go through those stages in what we used to call a "nuclear family" that is silently imploding, which far too many kids from the 1950's to this very day have had to do; but it is quite another matter when you're a kid trying to fit in a society that not only has no use for Jews but has this unfortunate tendency want to denigrate and destroy them. There are also quite a few amusing moments, as in the scenes in high school where LaBelle befriends a girl who tries to convert him from Judaism to Christianity (needless to say, that doesn't take), and his filming of his high school's hi-jinks on "Ditch Day" on the beach at Santa Cruz. LaBelle so accurately captures the triumphs and trauma of Spielberg's upbringing; and Williams, Dano, and Rogen are also incredibly good. Judd Hirsch has a ten-minute cameo role as Uncle Boris, who gives LaBelle some pointers about how art and love can tear a person in two, as it almost does to LaBelle.
So often in the past, Spielberg has been accused of being overtly sentimental and manipulative in some of his films, while being much too serious in others. But these charges are not very credible when it comes to those films; and they don't ring true when it comes to THE FABELMANS either. This is not only a personal film for Spielberg, it is eminently relatable to anyone who has had to go through the trauma of a family break-up and then to be bullied in school for the most petty and stupid reasons possible. Spielberg is a director of extraordinary ability, but he also believes in common people with common concerns and common dreams. In the end, THE FABELMANS hits very close to home when one thinks about it hard enough, and that's the kind of Hollywood art that Spielberg has engaged in for a half century-plus, to our everlasting benefit.