The Doctor’s Diagnosis: B
This being the least-advertised Steven Spielberg movie of all time, I had no idea what it was about going into it. I never saw a trailer, a commercial, even a poster, nothing. I only knew the title and that it’s a Spielberg movie. So, I didn’t know if this was fun Spielberg or serious Spielberg. Given the title, I thought maybe it was a fantasy film. Nope. That couldn’t have been more wrong. The Fablemans is an autobiographical film about Spielberg’s childhood and his emerging love of film. At its core, this is a family drama. While that may be disappoint to folks hoping for a fun Spielberg movie, and I was a tad disappointed at first, this is a solid drama with excellent performances that will hit a few strong notes for anyone that grew up loving movies.
The Fablemans is a coming-of-age story about Sammy Fableman, our stand-in for Speilberg himself, and his family, the titular Fablemans. The defining moment of young Sammy’s life is when his parents take him to see his first movie, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, in 1952 and he instantly becomes fascinated with the magic of film. He recreates the train crash from that movie with his toy trains and instantly knows that he wants to be a filmmaker. The rest of the film is about his growing love of movies, his growing tension with his parents (his father is essentially a cuckold as his mother sleeps with a family friend), deals with antisemitism and grows toward becoming one of the most successful filmmakers of all time.
Obviously being someone obsessed with movies, a lot of this struck really close to home for me (the movie stuff, not the cuckold father stuff). When Sammy sits mystified while watching The Greatest Show on Earth, I was having flashbacks to when I was a child and watched Ghostbusters, the first movie that I ever watched. I was blown away. The very concept of creating an alternative reality on the screen, a reality that could be guided and manipulated to create any story that you want, completely fascinated me. That is the core of The Fabelmans: it is a love letter to the craft of filmmaking and the affect that it can have on an audience. I didn’t become Spielberg, I wisely opted for a soul-crushing office job instead, but watching his subsequent obsession and growing innovations with filmmaking was an almost cathartic experience for me. In an age when movies are referred to as “content” and thrown together with all the love of a corporate memo, watching Sammy’s growing, completely unironic and genuine love of film develop was a reminder of why I loved cinema in the first place. Overly sentimental? Possibly. Effective? Yep.
The problem with The Fabelmans is the 2.5-hour running time and the family drama often drags the film down and distracts from the primary message. There is career drama as Sammy’s dad has to drag his family around the country as dictated by job changes. There is the aforementioned love triangle between Sammy’s parents and a family friend that is dramatically effective while also being foreshadowed to the point that the ultimate reveal is anti-climactic. When considered separately, these subplots work. They are well-written, perfectly performed and, given that this is an autobiographical film, likely and integral part of Spielberg’s retelling of his own youth. However, somewhat ironically, these bits often distract from a film that is primarily meant as a tribute to film. By the second hour, one does start to feel the running time and some of this could have been pared down.
The issue with trimming that down, though, would mean losing some truly stellar performances. The career of Michelle Williams continues to beg the question of how the blonde chick from Halloween:H20 somehow became one of our greatest living actresses. But she did. She is absolutely brilliant here, creating a truly sad portrayal of a women that is stuck between her love for her family and her dissatisfaction with her husband. It’s an incredibly layered performance that creates empathy for a woman that could easily have become more simply callous in the hands of a lesser actress. Paul Dano is also excellent as her husband, a man that is simultaneously loving, smothering and in complete denial about the obvious collapse of the relationship with his wife. Seth Rogan is also solid as the family “friend” that comes between the parents, particularly in his attempts to establish a relationship with Sammy even when they both know what’s going on and the dynamic has become strained. Rogan isn’t in the same league as Williams or Dano, but holds his own here.
My favorite scene in The Fablemans is the final scene, in which Spielberg meets his favorite director (I won’t spoil it, but he’s played by David freaking Lynch). The angry, old cinematic legend gives Spielberg one bit of advice before kicking him out of his office and the framing of the film adjusts to reflect the advice that Sammy just received. It’s a great subtle moment that summarizes the film’s tribute to film and portends Sammy’s rise as a filmmaker. That pretty well summarizes The Fabelmans: if you grew up loving movies and wanting to make movies, there is a lot here that will likely hit you hard. If you don’t have that feeling toward cinema, the running time and melodrama may be too much for you. Choose accordingly.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabelmans#/media/File:Fabelmansposter.jpeg
