The Fabelmans
Portrait of an artist as an idealized young man
Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord’s Sammy falls in love with film in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans.
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says newspaperman Maxwell Scott at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The meaning is simple — people need legends. They need something to believe in and admire. And when the truth of a story would damage that legend, one must weigh very carefully whether the truth is more beneficial to the public than the legend.
It’s no mistake that young Sammy Fabelman sits starry-eyed in a screening of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, nor is it coincidence that Sam is framed by the poster for the movie as he eagerly sits in a movie studio office later in the film. When faced with going back to look at himself and his family as a young man, director Steven Spielberg is choosing to print the legend.
And that’s how we get The Fabelmans.
It’s right there in the name — Fabelmans, stand-ins for the Spielberg family, are the fable Spielberg tells about his life. The term Fabel can also mean the critical analysis of the plot of a work of art, but it’s clear from the offset that Spielberg is more interested in the legend than the truth. Because of this, the movie never really feels as personal as it should. Revelations of affairs, triumphs, and tragedies are all shown to us through the gauzy veil of legend, never allowing the audience too close nor allowing the audience any real insight.
The Fabelmans follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) as he falls in love with the movies and decides to pursue filmmaking. His father, kind-hearted engineer Burt (Paul Dano), thinks moviemaking is a hobby and initially dismisses Sammy’s love of moviemaking. His mother, mercurial Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a fellow artist and pushes Sammy to chase his dreams since she felt she couldn’t chase hers. He also has three sisters, but Spielberg barely bothers to develop them, so just know there will be three girls in the backgrounds of many shots.
As Sammy begins to make increasingly elaborate movies, he begins to see the world in more cinematic terms. He also begins to see the cracks widening in his parent's marriage. Making movies becomes Sammy’s way of dealing with any problem he encounters — from domestic drama to antisemitic bullies.
There are no doubt grains of truth in Spielberg’s cinematic biography, but the whole exercise feels carefully crafted to keep anyone from being the villain. The movie feels like watching the film adaptation of Gilderoy Lockhart’s Magical Me all the pomp and circumstance are there, but our hero is suspiciously good at every turn. It’s a harsh contrast from James Gray’s Armageddon Time, where his autobiographical stand-in is a bit of a jerk as a kid and must learn to change.
The other sour note in The Fabelmans is Williams as Mitzi. She seems horribly miscast as the larger-than-life mother of the Fabelman clan. Williams has always had a knack for quiet film moments, where a slew of emotions play out in her eyes or with minute shifts in her face. She gets a few moments to show this off in The Fabelmans but seems horribly uncomfortable with the big showy moments that populate the performance. As Mitzi stomps around shouting, you can almost feel Williams’ discomfort and it’s distracting.
Still, there is no doubt that Steven Spielberg knows how to make a movie. The technical aspects of The Fabelmans are glorious to behold. Frequent collaborator and legendary cinematographer Janusz Kaminiski works with Spielberg to blend different film aspect ratios and film stocks to craft a loving tribute to Spielberg’s evolution as an artist.
And that’s when The Fabelmans works best, when we see Sammy discovering his love of filmmaking and new ways to make his own films better. When Sammy figures out a way to make gunshots look real in his boy scout Western, the entire audience marvels. It’s a thrilling look at how his inventiveness creates magic that immerses the audience. The naked enthusiasm Sammy has for improving his work feels like the most honest moments in the film, whether it’s Sammy freaking out at getting to use an expensive camera to shoot Senior Ditch Day or discovering how to make a squib for a bloody shootout.
It’s less convincing that he gave an evil antisemite jock an existential crisis via the magic of movie-making, but hey, every hero needs an origin story.
The movie also runs for two and a half hours, which is a big ask for idealized reminiscing. There is an absolutely brilliant 100-minute film in The Fabelmans — if we cut out all the family drama that Spielberg doesn’t seem ready to really grapple with and just focus on how Spielberg’s love of moviemaking blossomed. There’s an especially lovely moment with Judd Hirsch speaking about art that is more moving than any of William’s mannered histrionics. Also keep your eye out for one of the greatest cameos of the year: director David Lynch in an absolutely brilliant bit part.
If you’re a Spielberg fanatic, there’s plenty to enjoy in The Fabelmans. The movie is littered with easter eggs of the director’s career. It’s a shame the film doesn’t feel as emotionally honest as it does visually proficient.
Verdict: Spielberg doesn’t dig very deep for The Fabelmans, but it sure does look pretty.
The Fabelmans is rated PG-13 and is in theaters November 23.
