Steven Spielberg has always attested there was a personal element to all of his films, even if they were filled with popcorn movie spectacle as well. However, with The Fabelmans, Spielberg digs deep into his own unique and tumultuous childhood to craft his most personal film yet. Despite it being described as semi-autobiographical, the film digs deep into Spielberg's relationships with his family, especially his parents, as well as how his ongoing love for filmmaking began and developed.
In 1952, young Sammy Fabelman (played by Mateo Zoryon Francis DeFord) is being taken to his first movie by his parents, Mitzi and Burt (played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano), to his first movie. That movie is, of course, The Greatest Show on Earth and Sammy finds himself enraptured and thrilled by the images on the screen. Yet, he is haunted by the massive train crash set piece in the film. He even goes so far to ask for a train set for Hanukkah and proceeds to crash the train over and over again in an attempt to recreate what he saw in the movie. Soon, his mom suggests Sammy film crashing the train set and then he can watch that over and over again and therefore not risk permanently ruining his train set, which was a concern his father had. The results ignite something in young Sammy as he starts making other movies around the house, frequently casting his younger sisters in various roles. When his father gets a new job opportunity, the family winds up moving to Phoenix, Arizona along with family friend "Uncle" Bennie Loewy (played by Seth Rogen). As the years pass, Sammy (now played by Gabriel LaBelle), continues with his filmmaking passions, often incorporating family members and even fellow members of his boy scout troop into the productions and even beginning to experiment with special effects. He also begins to notice a growing attraction between his mother and Bennie, something that would dramatically change his relationship with both his parents as well as his family going forward.
Steven Spielberg directed the film with a script he co-wrote with Tony Kushner. The resulting film is one he calls semi-autobiographical, but based on what is known about his childhood and his family, it seems to play closer to fact than many biopics I have seen. The film is perhaps a bit more fair to both of his parents that Spielberg probably was as a kid as his rocky relationship with his father is well documented as he had incorrectly blamed him for his parents divorce. The bulk of the film does focus on that chapter of his life, as well as balancing his growing passion for film with his family life, while also dealing with the turmoil of moving and growing up in areas without a large Jewish population that leads to some Anti-Semitic bullying. Yet, he does a wonderful job highlighting the two distinct sides of his family, with both his far more free-spirited mother on one side and his more analytical, technical minded father on the other and how both sides had their own impacts and helped form the person he would become. The film is beautifully shot by Janusz Kaminski with exquisite period detail from production designer Rick Carter. Throughout the film we see recreations of the short films Spielberg made as a kid and they are wonderfully reproduced and a joy to see the ingenuity he used with those films to simulate explosions or gunfire with simple effects, even if Spielberg couldn't help but occasionally improve on what he made before with better camera angles, etc.
The film has a magnificent cast, led by Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy. LaBelle gives such a empathetic performance as his character goes through the various ups and downs of childhood as he works to make his dreams come true, even as his home life crumbles around him. There is a moment that sticks out to me, when Sammy is editing the home movies from the camping trip the family takes and as he watches the footage he sees the growing attraction between his mother and Bennie and LaBelle conveys so much without any dialogue at all. Michelle Williams has a tricky role as Mitzi Fabelman in that Mitzi is such a free spirit of a character, who can be impulsive and tend towards mood swings. Yet, Williams plays the role with real grace and emotion as a woman who finds herself caught between two men she loves and trying to figure out what she wants as well as how to keep her family together. She is also a colorful character, prone to doing such wild things as getting a pet monkey because she needed a laugh. Paul Dano has an interesting task at playing Burt, someone who is in many ways the opposite of Mitzi. He is far more technical, academic and scientific minded. When young Sammy is nervous about seeing his first movie, Burt breaks down how a movie works in very technical terms, that it's all just an optical illusion as opposed to Mitzi's far more poetic explanation. Still, Dano gives a real warmth to his character and it's clear he loves his family, even if he doesn't show it in the best ways. Seth Rogen makes a rare dramatic turn as Bennie Loewy and does a great job in the role. Some of the humor he is known for comes through in the role and he makes his character easy to love, but he also handles heavier dramatic moments quite well, especially a heart to heart talk with Sammy late in the movie. Judd Hirsch shows up in a small but pivotal role as Mitzi's eccentric Uncle Boris and absolutely nails his big scene when he gives young Sammy an impassioned speech about what it means to be an artist, drawing from his own past working in the film industry as well as with the Circus.
The Fabelmans is easily one of the best movies of the year for me. He tells a deeply personal story of the formative years of his life with plenty of warmth and heart while, not unlike Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous before it, fictionalizing it somewhat in an effort to create a streamlined and satisfying film. It's a film he could probably only tell now with a certain sense of maturity and understanding required. I was also surprised by just how much I related to the film and the character of Sammy (and I suppose by extension, Steven himself). I won't get into the nitty gritty of it, but it certainly did bring back a number of memories for me of my own childhood. But then again, I suppose the themes of family, growing up and coming of age can be truly universal in their own ways.
