The Fabel­mans

The pan­dem­ic seems to have been a peri­od of intro­spec­tion for some of our most revered film­mak­ers with the cine-mem­oir becom­ing a recur­ring theme. James Gray chose to make a film about his expe­ri­ence grow­ing up in New York City dur­ing the tur­bu­lent 1970s in Armaged­don Time, while Richard Lin­klater​’s Hous­ton child­hood inspired his Roto­scope fea­ture Apol­lo 10½. Now it’s the turn of Steven Spiel­berg, who charts his com­ing-of-age in Ari­zona and the dis­so­lu­tion of his par­ents’ mar­riage as coun­ter­point to his blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship with cin­e­ma. For a direc­tor whose entire career has engaged with the con­cept of sto­ry­telling and myth­mak­ing, it’s fit­ting he would final­ly tack­le his own life with this same play­ful perspicuity.

When we meet Sam­my Fabel­man, he’s queu­ing for his first ever trip to the cin­e­ma with his moth­er Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and father Burt (Paul Dano). Sam­my is appre­hen­sive about The Great­est Show on Earth, but his par­ents reas­sure him he’s about to have the most won­der­ful time. This might be the under­state­ment of the cen­tu­ry as Sam­my is for­ev­er trans­formed by the expe­ri­ence, and when he returns home, all he wants to do is recre­ate what he saw on the screen. His dreamy, ditzy moth­er ful­ly sup­ports this, while his absent-mind­ed but sharp father allows Sam­my to make use of his camera.

It’s Burt’s spiffy job with IBM which takes the Fabel­mans to Cal­i­for­nia, where Sam­my strug­gles to fit in and is sub­ject to anti­se­mit­ic bul­ly­ing. In these high school scenes we feel the undoubt­ed polit­i­cal influ­ence of Tony Kush­n­er, who wrote the script with Spiel­berg fol­low­ing their col­lab­o­ra­tion on West Side Sto­ry in 2021. It does feel rem­i­nis­cent of that film, or the likes of Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti – it feels impor­tant to note that one of Sammy’s bul­lies is lit­er­al­ly a jock called Chad. But Kush­n­er and Spiel­berg cap­ture it all with such wry earnest­ness, it’s nev­er jarring.

When Sam­my starts to date reli­gious class­mate Mon­i­ca (Chloe East) the humour of their roman­tic tête-à-têtes is a high­light. So too are the scenes of Sam­my and his friends cre­at­ing their own movies – home­made war epics and west­erns. Does Spiel­berg per­haps present him­self as a preter­nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed teen who was des­tined to go onto become the man he did? A lit­tle, but know­ing the kid hyper­fo­cused on home-made spe­cial effects and cut­ting togeth­er the per­fect end of year class video would grow up to be one of the great­est film­mak­ers of all time, it’s dif­fi­cult to argue too much with this nos­tal­gic view of the past.

Mean­while, bored by her sub­ur­ban life and an absent hus­band, the flighty Mitzi gifts Sam­my his cre­ativ­i­ty, but is pre­sent­ed as an inter­mit­tent pres­ence in his life – one that per­haps Spiel­berg even now doesn’t ful­ly under­stand. Williams is on fine form, though a lit­tle one-note, while Dano receives a chance to play a more sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter than his usu­al type­cast­ing. The Fabel­mans clear­ly comes from a place of deep sin­cer­i­ty – while it might not be a par­tic­u­lar­ly ​“deep” film, it is absolute­ly the Spiel­berg film about Becom­ing Spiel­berg that we’ve been wait­ing for, echo­ing the world of child-like won­der and the tenac­i­ty to man­i­fest dreams that his whole career has cen­tred around.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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