How The Fabelmans represents a culmination of… | Little White Lies

How The Fabel­mans rep­re­sents a cul­mi­na­tion of Spielberg’s cin­e­mat­ic interests

17 Jan 2023

Words by Sarah Buddery

Two journalists wearing masks, one holding a camera and filming whilst the other stands beside them.
Two journalists wearing masks, one holding a camera and filming whilst the other stands beside them.
The film­mak­er’s homage to his child­hood has foun­da­tions in a career spent inves­ti­gat­ing famil­ial dynamics.

Steven Spiel­berg has always been a direc­tor who has poured his heart and soul into the movies that he makes – this has nev­er been more evi­dent than in his lat­est film, The Fabel­mans. For all intents and pur­pos­es, The Fabel­mans could have been called The Spiel­bergs, as it is inspired by the director’s own life expe­ri­ences and his pas­sion for movie-mak­ing – a love affair that has spanned more than six decades and result­ed in some of the great­est films of all time. Spiel­berg him­self has said of The Fabel­mans, It wasn’t about metaphor, it was about mem­o­ry.” This state­ment could eas­i­ly apply to so many of Spielberg’s films – while his fil­mog­ra­phy is undoubt­ed­ly rich in mean­ing and sym­bol­ism, there has always been some­thing of him­self in his films as well.

Per­haps the most obvi­ous exam­ple is what Spielberg’s films have to say about fam­i­ly – more specif­i­cal­ly the idea of bro­ken fam­i­lies and sep­a­ra­tion. The Fabel­mans explic­it­ly explores the frac­tures in the Fabel­man fam­i­ly unit and the tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship between par­ents Mitzi and Burt (played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano respec­tive­ly) – who are based on Spielberg’s moth­er and father, Leah Adler and Arnold Spiel­berg. Yet it is hard to ignore the recur­ring theme of fam­i­ly in Spielberg’s oeu­vre – par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the 80s and 90s in films such as E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al and Hook. While quite right­ly remem­bered as nos­tal­gic child­hood favourites, both films also explore the idea of absent par­ents and the effect this has on the chil­dren caught in the middle.

Elliott’s (Hen­ry Thomas) father in E.T. is notice­ably absent, and it is men­tioned that he is in Mex­i­co hav­ing recent­ly left his fam­i­ly behind. This has a pro­found effect on Elliott – who you could argue is the stand-in for Spiel­berg in this film – and leads him to form a close con­nec­tion with the alien he calls E.T. who has him­self been sep­a­rat­ed from his fam­i­ly and is try­ing to make con­tact with them.

Spiel­berg cred­its his father with unlock­ing his fas­ci­na­tion with the cos­mos, stat­ing in a 2005 inter­view that, he led me to these won­der­ments of both nature and fic­tion.” Through films like E.T. and Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, Spiel­berg explores the pain of fam­i­lies torn apart against the vast back­drop of space – a con­stant source of won­der and inspi­ra­tion for his movies, as well as one of the things he most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with his estranged father.

The father per­haps most close­ly aligned with Spielberg’s own appears in Hook. Peter Ban­ning (Robin Williams) is a worka­holic father who may be phys­i­cal­ly present in his children’s lives but is far from being emo­tion­al­ly avail­able to them, always putting work before them and miss­ing out on impor­tant moments. While on the sur­face Hook is an imag­i­na­tive retelling of J. M. Barrie’s clas­sic Peter Pan, beneath that it is the sto­ry about a father hav­ing to fight for his kids, and mak­ing the con­scious deci­sion to show up for them.

Released in 1991, Hook came off the back of Spielberg’s own divorce in 1989, and in many ways, it can be seen as an expres­sion of his com­mit­ment to father­hood. In this film, Spiel­berg is not the chil­dren, he is Peter, and through this char­ac­ter we see him mak­ing a con­scious deci­sion to per­haps be the father that he felt he didn’t have fol­low­ing his par­ents’ divorce.

When Spielberg’s par­ents split, it had a huge impact on him and shaped the type of films he would go on to make. Art born out of con­flict and pain is some­thing that flows through The Fabel­mans and can be seen through­out Spielberg’s movies as well. Sam­my Fabel­man (Gabriel LaBelle) is warned by his mother’s uncle (Judd Hirsch) that his art will always be at odds with his fam­i­ly, and in a cru­el twist, it is Sammy’s lens that cap­tures the signs of his fam­i­ly break­ing apart.

Just like Peter in Hook, Burt Fabel­man is not an uncar­ing man, but one that fre­quent­ly places work before fam­i­ly com­mit­ments. This dri­ves the free-spir­it­ed Mitzi into the arms of Burt’s friend and busi­ness part­ner, Ben­nie (Seth Roger), and it is Sammy’s home movies that pick up on the warn­ing signs that ulti­mate­ly lead to the fam­i­ly being torn apart. Spiel­berg large­ly blamed the divorce on his father, and in the years fol­low­ing, their rela­tion­ship was strained and dis­tant – a pain that is woven through so many of his sub­se­quent films.

Man sitting in room watching TV showing rocky landscape

There are some more overt exam­ples of Spiel­berg work­ing through his own feel­ings about his family’s cir­cum­stances – the sep­a­ra­tion of a boy from his fam­i­ly in the war dra­ma Empire of the Sun being one that par­tic­u­lar­ly focus­es on the pain and trau­ma expe­ri­enced when a fam­i­ly is torn apart. How­ev­er, there are also some sur­pris­ing angles where the direc­tor places him­self in his father’s shoes to con­sid­er why some­one would want to leave their family.

In Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, one could argue that the char­ac­ter of Roy Neary (Richard Drey­fuss) is Spielberg’s attempt to try and see things through his father’s eyes, with­out going so far as to say that his actions were jus­ti­fied. At the end of the film, Roy makes the per­haps sur­pris­ing deci­sion to leave behind his fam­i­ly and go with the aliens. For him, this feels like the only choice he has – go and explore the beau­ty of the vast uni­verse, or try to rec­on­cile with his fam­i­ly who has made it abun­dant­ly clear they don’t sup­port his alien obsession.

Spiel­berg admits that Close Encoun­ters is not a film he would’ve been able to make after he became a father, say­ing to Vari­ety, It’s very easy to have some­body leave his fam­i­ly to get on a moth­er­ship when you’re not a father your­self.” While Spiel­berg isn’t try­ing to sug­gest that his own father made the deci­sion to leave light­ly, Close Encoun­ters at least shows the direc­tor work­ing through the rea­son­ing of some­one leav­ing – again against the back­drop of space that was so intrin­sic to his rela­tion­ship with his father.

Inter­est­ing­ly, The Fabel­mans ties togeth­er some of the key themes of Close Encoun­ters – tech­nol­o­gy and music – offer­ing anoth­er com­pelling insight into the per­son­al ele­ments Spiel­berg likes to scat­ter through his films. Inspired by his own par­ents, Mitzi Fabel­man is a pianist, and Burt Fabel­man is a com­put­er engi­neer. While their dif­fer­ences even­tu­al­ly lead to their sep­a­ra­tion, Close Encoun­ters sees their ele­ments brought togeth­er: tech­nol­o­gy, music, and sci­ence work­ing togeth­er in beau­ti­ful, com­mu­nica­tive harmony.

As well as the focus on fam­i­lies, The Fabel­mans also sees Spiel­berg explor­ing the wist­ful roman­ti­cism of the movies – some­thing that is par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting giv­en that he has been respon­si­ble for so many nos­tal­gic film clas­sics. For Sam­my Fabel­man, cin­e­ma is trans­for­ma­tive, and it is Cecil B DeMille’s The Great­est Show on Earth that ignit­ed his pas­sion for mak­ing movies. Spielberg’s love of movies is evi­dent through­out his career. The high-stakes thrills of Duel and Jaws took cues from the Mas­ter of Sus­pense Alfred Hitch­cock, while his visu­al prowess and expert use of block­ing were inspired by the sweep­ing grandiose film­mak­ing of John Ford – who mem­o­rably crops up in The Fabel­mans played by David Lynch. Few direc­tors seem to under­stand the craft of film­mak­ing and its rich his­to­ry as well as Spielberg.

But what has become his trade­mark is that child­like sense of won­der at the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of film. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in the Indi­ana Jones films. Work­ing along­side George Lucas – a direc­tor who would share Spielberg’s gid­di­ness for adven­tur­ous cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry­telling – these films evoke so many of the ones that Spiel­berg loves. Com­bin­ing ele­ments of 1939’s Gun­ga Din, movie seri­als like Flash Gor­don, his­tor­i­cal epics such as Lawrence of Ara­bia, the James Bond movies, Ser­gio Leone’s Spaghet­ti West­erns, and of course, John Ford, the orig­i­nal Indi­ana Jones tril­o­gy in par­tic­u­lar feels like films made by some­one who loves movies with every fiber of their being. Cru­cial­ly, Spielberg’s love of movies helps him to under­stand what makes a great one, and it is no won­der the films he direct­ed have been so revered.

Rolling Stone has described The Fabel­mans as, the Steven Spiel­berg movie we’ve been wait­ing four decades for him to make.” While this is true in the sense that it feels like the syn­the­sis of the sto­ry he has been telling in frag­ments for years, it fails to speak to the genius of the man who is so pas­sion­ate about telling sto­ries, so con­scious of the impact they had on him, and so eager to use it as a means for grow­ing and devel­op­ing as a per­son, that almost his entire fil­mog­ra­phy feels bio­graph­i­cal. It takes a true artist to turn pain into joy – par­tic­u­lar­ly a joy that con­tin­ues to speak to each new gen­er­a­tion – and The Fabel­mans is a tes­ta­ment to this. Movies can change the world. They changed Spielberg’s world, and now his movies have indeli­bly changed cin­e­ma history.

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