Film Review: "The Fabelmans"

Carlos alvarez | dec. 15, 2022 | Arts & entertAINMENT

For the past two months, I have been reduced to tears every time the trailer for the newest Steven Spielberg film has played before various films that I’ve seen in theaters. With each tear, my anticipation for it only grew. The resurgence of the “love letter to cinema” subgenre that auteurs have been engaging in recently, mainly in awards-seeking pursuits, has been a true treat for me and the introspection that has come with it has been refreshingly intimate in some of my favorite films of the past few years. With all these factors (and a David Lynch cameo), naturally, Spielberg’s contribution to the love letter canon excited me.

“The Fabelmans” is a playfully semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film from one of the most vital voices in the medium’s history. Following Sam Fabelman (Spielberg’s surrogate character played by Mateo Zoryan and Gabriel LaBelle), the film navigates the evolution of his love for cinema over the backdrop of the slow deterioration of his parents’ marriage. In editorializing his life, Spielberg is almost performing an exercise in psychoanalysis and infusing his portrayal of his experiences with the direct meaning and lessons he learned from them. Perhaps the most memorable scene from the film involves Sam’s uncle (Judd Hirsch) coming to stay with them. In talking to Sam about film, he explains that his art and his family are two forces that will tear him apart. The somewhat comedic but striking performance from Hirsch, who deserves a best supporting actor nomination, is a gripping thesis that the rest of the film wrestles with and repeatedly refers to. The complexity added by the breakdown of Sam’s parents’ relationship, and the subsequent destruction of the family, culminates in a film that would feel bloated if anyone other than Spielberg was in the director’s chair.

While I wish that the film was more succinct in how it portrayed Spielberg’s internal struggles and what he has made of them, I still struggle to find many points of weakness. There is a certain vanity to how Spielberg portrays himself making his high school films and the herculean empathy with which Sam deals with his family’s issues, but it is some of the only mercy he has for the audience as Sam continues to love his parents and understand their actions. While the distortion of the truth somewhat detracts from Spielberg’s introspection, the likely reality of how he dealt with their divorce would’ve really made the tears flow. The importance of taking care of what you love is prevalent in every scene, but I think Spielberg gets away from what he is trying to say on more than one occasion. However, those excursions hold a great deal of value in characterizing Sam and giving him the complexity that Spielberg wants people to see him with.

Sam experiences antisemitism, heartbreak, and just general anguish as a whirlwind of misfortune sweeps over his life for the majority of the film’s runtime. But through them, the importance placed on his ambitions and persistence to do what he loves is reaffirmed. It is a film that loves film, but understands that like anything, it holds power and impact that cannot be abused. One specific moment, which I found to be extremely impactful, makes Sam realize every one of his frames and the perspective from which they are captured can be beautiful but also crushing. The affirmation of his work and how impactful they can be even in a negative sense is executed with extreme grace and tenderness. The only issue I would derive from the film and how many beautiful moments like this that it is composed of would just be how much longer it would need to be to properly execute each experience with maximum impact.

The syntax of the filmmaking in which this dense story is told also feels unique and defined by a playful sense of metatextuality. Framing, especially as it is used in respect to Mitzi and Burt Fabelman (played respectively by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano), is a constant force driving the physical representation of their fractured relationship in context to Sam and his sisters. The frivolity of the camerawork, which is exemplified in the last shot that has been a topic of constant discussion since the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, is deeply rooted in the metatextuality of Spielberg directing a film about himself beginning to direct films. The camera has a great deal of character almost as a reflective narrator of the film that is directly adapting and reacting to each event. Each movement and composition are full of Spielberg’s interpretation of the way he experienced each event and what was most important to him in those moments. It is almost as if he has the opportunity to relive these events from a third person perspective and always wants to be looking in the right place to not miss anything.

Overall, I do not think I could fully fathom what the film could be like until I witnessed it and although some may find it underwhelming, I felt content with how deeply human it is. While I do not think “The Fabelmans” is as large of a revelation as I had hoped, as someone who loves cinema and the films that he has made, I deeply enjoyed his therapeutic exploration of his childhood and the way he subtly rewrote his story. 

“The Fabelmans” is now available on Video on demand.