The Fabelmans review: One of Steven Spielberg’s best films tells its own story

Polygon has an on-site team at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival covering the horror, comedy, drama and action films that aim to dominate the cinematic conversation as we head into awards season. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s TIFF premiere.

In an age obsessed with character creation stories, the early word on Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans made it seem like he wanted to join the cinematic trend. But his crowd-pleasing coming-of-age story doesn’t fit in this box or any other. His deeply personal narrative is not just an autobiography, a greatest hits recap of a unique filmmaker’s career, or a cliched ode to filmmaking. The Fabelmans is a vulnerable reach into the past to heal a wound that still seems as tender as the day it opened decades ago, despite the comedic outbursts and measured ruminations on display.

Because at the heart of almost every Spielberg film is the ghost of a boy who is still sad about the divorce of his parents and paints over his grief in the huge sandpit of the cinema. You can see this child’s pain unconsciously spreading through the quarreling mom and dad characters Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It originates in the family dynamic of ET the extraterrestrial. And it’s evolving Catch Me If You Can, as Frank Abagnale takes refuge in his mother’s second family home. But Spielberg has never approached his own childhood as straightforwardly as he does in this latest film.

Once in a while, The Fabelmans feels more like an idealized daydream of what could have happened to him, often grinding down the edges of the real world and the sheer anger he felt as the son of divorced parents. This is not a confession story. It gives the real-life characters a necessary grace that kind people only find after coming out on the other side of a lifetime of processing. And it features a level of craftsmanship – from intentional blocking to controlled, ingenious camera moves – that only occurs when you’re, well, Steven Spielberg. Above all, it is a sensitive message from the director to his mother.

Spielberg worked again with Tony Kushner (his collaborator on Westside Story, Lincolnand Munich) to develop the script. Their story begins with Burt (Paul Dano, in an amazing performance) and Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams, in an amazing performance) taking their young son Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord in early scenes and Gabriel LaBelle in the teenage sequences) with them. to the movies to see Cecil B. DeMille The greatest show in the world. The images emanating from the screen dazzle and arouse Sammy. And a flaming train wreck, where a car is impaled, blood spills and explosions fill the air, scares him so much that he obsessively re-enacts the scene over and over with his toy train set.

To calm her son, Mitzi lets Sammy borrow his father’s camera so he can film one of his toy train accidents to face his fears. However, what Mitzi really does is ignite a therapeutic love for filmmaking by creating a lens that becomes Sammy’s tool in trying to make sense of the world.

Sammy’s universe is not that complex. Burt is a brilliant, workaholic computer engineer and Mitzi is a free-spirited, classically trained pianist. Sammy has three sisters: Reggie (Julia Butters), Natalie (Keeley Karsten), and Lisa (Sophia Kopera). The New Jersey house they all live in is the perfect incubator for Sammy’s imagination. In their close-knit Jewish community, they maintain Jewish traditions, share their cultural humor and are frequently visited by relatives. (This is an intensely Jewish film.) They also hang out with Burt’s best friend and colleague Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogen), a man who seems totally supportive of the couple whose mistakes could one day ruin the family. In building the imperative support system the Fabelmans enjoy in their neighborhood, Spielberg and Kushner’s assured script reveals the cracks that formed as the family strayed from its familiar boundaries.

Burt is ambitious and selfish. First he uproots his family and moves with them to Arizona. He then takes sticks and makes his way to Northern California. As the family moves west, Sammy distances himself from his family and roots – bringing him closer to his artistic passions. This early setup, which occupies the first hour of this 151-minute personal essay, proceeds at a slow pace, with an initially disorienting thesis. How much Spielberg is in Sammy? How much of what we see is fictionalized? Why wasn’t that just named The Spielbergs to save everyone the headache?

In one scene, Sammy and his Eagle Scouts sneak into a movie. It is significant that it is John Ford The man who shot Liberty Valance plays. Starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, the film centers on a local senator who recounts how his rise to power was fueled by a legend that he shot the famous defending champion when in reality he didn’t. It’s a film about mythmaking, reinvention, and the American West as a compelling backdrop for creating your own identity. The Fabelmans works in a similar way: it’s not a beat-by-beat origin story, it’s a chance for Spielberg to remake the past without the heavy burden of his own name.

It also brings him back to the memory of his mother. In many ways, Sammy and Mitzi are exactly the same. Burt dismisses her artistic passions as hobbies. And Mitzi, in particular, has spent years putting her creative pursuits on the back burner in favor of her husband’s burgeoning career. In the words of Mitzi’s uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch, who absolutely smashes his one scene), she could have played for any symphony anywhere. Instead, she became a mother. Now she and Sammy look for a way to overcome Burt’s idiosyncrasies. But the once-close bond between mother and son is dissolved when Sammy learns a disturbing secret about Mitzi (in an elegantly curated sequence from fabelmans editors Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn), causing him to temporarily lose his love for filmmaking.

Make no mistake, however, The Fabelmans is not grumpy. A visual whim dances across the screen. Well-calibrated tracking shots and Janusz Kaminski’s dazzling cinematography set the creative bar. References to Spielberg’s greatest hits add flair to his own career. The scenes in which Sammy starts out shooting simple shorts and then moves on to decent homemade war movies are inviting enough to draw an entire audience into engaging with amateur filmmaking. And at Sammy’s new high school in Los Angeles, he falls in love with a Christian girl, Monica (Chloe East), whose attempts to convert Sammy make for licentious prayers that double as euphemisms.

And yet the sense of betrayal a child feels after a divorce drives this film. Here, LaBelle shines as teenage Sammy. He not only imitates Spielberg’s speech rhythm and body language. He rises above mere artificiality by portraying Sammy first as a dweeby, unsportsmanlike and street dumb kid, and then as Spielberg. Nowhere is that felt more than when Sammy confronts his anti-Semitic bullies with the power of theatrical experience. This is a movie that really loves watching people watch movies: it loves the inner workings, the hypnotic awe, and the revealed truths that happen when people see themselves on screen. LaBelle justifies these scenes with a sincerity that is not cheesy but euphoric and contagious.

And while LaBelle is wonderful on her own, he discovers another level when he plays with an ardent Williams and a subtle but strong Dano. (The character work done here is some of his best.) Williams delivers a free-wheeling performance as a captive housewife that would be considered incredibly brilliant in its rawness and vibrancy if she didn’t pull it off easily. Williams perfectly articulates the emotion of a woman about to tear herself apart until she remembers that she isn’t she Dreams or happiness that need to be shredded.

But Spielberg takes a refreshing approach by being careful not to portray Burt or Mitzi as outright villains. They are complicated people with unmissable needs that they cannot meet while staying together. This is Sammy understanding the ambiguity of adulthood. This is Spielberg embracing it so he can see his mother as a valid person in her own right.

At the end of the film – which includes a hilarious cameo by David Lynch as John Ford – Sammy leaps down a studio seat, knowing his troubles are behind him and that his future is right ahead. The Fabelmans is Spielberg, who uses his vast knowledge of filmmaking to compose a story that has his whole heart glued to the screen. It is beautiful, haunting, compelling blockbuster filmmaking perfectly timed to remind viewers of the power that a film can possess.

The Fabelmans will open in a limited release on November 11th, with a wide release on November 23rd.