Steven Spielberg has made what may be his most personal movie yet in THE FABELMANS, one of the year’s best films. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.I walked into Steven Spielberg’s THE FABLEMANS anticipating one kind of movie and received the polar opposite. I expected a sweet but derivative little coming-of-age, holiday movie (but Jewish, of course) about a boy becoming obsessed with movies and his parents’ conflicting views towards their child’s hobby. (Think Cinema Paradiso but in America.) This is so much more than that. Filmmaking obviously plays a key role in this movie, but there’s more to this story that I never saw coming. Kudos to the marketing team behind this movie! THE FABELMANS doesn’t entirely have your linear structure of a movie with a beginning, middle, and end because LIFE doesn’t have that, and who says that movies need to follow these rules? The film is 151 minutes long, and I never wanted it to end. This is one of the best movies of the year.
Not too long ago, I reviewed a somewhat similar movie called Armageddon Time, also in theaters. Well, they’re actually very different, now that I think about it. They’re similar in that they both revolve around Jewish families and the protagonist is a little boy. Armageddon Time¸ which some critics have been a little negative towards (I personally LOVED it), was much darker and political. THE FABELMANS is a semi-autobiographical story of Spielberg’s childhood, which he co-wrote with Tony Kushner. It’s been in the works for years, and now we finally get it for the holidays in theaters only, Baruch HaShem. On the big screen, we get to see the passion and grit that went into it all, the incredible performances, Janusz Kaminski’s exquisite cinematography, John Williams’ score, the drama, the comedy, the nostalgic moments of being a kid and falling in love for the first time, making movies, chilling with friends, arguing with your parents, etc. ALL of it! Spielberg hasn’t made a vanity piece for himself. He’s made a movie about a family that the entire world – movie buffs or not – will relate to.
Even if you do think THE FABELMANS is a pretentious vanity piece, why shouldn’t it be? Why shouldn’t we get to celebrate the life of Steven Spielberg, the god of filmmaking who has gifted us with so many classics? Whatever you take away from the movie, it’s a film for everyone, but especially for people who grew up loving movies and used to film their own movies with their cameras. If you grew up making movies AND adoring Spielberg as much as I did (the first movie I ever saw was Jaws), then you will eat this movie up from start to finish.
Anyway, if I’ve spoken this much already and haven’t even written about the plot yet, it’s because I’m obsessed with the movie! My apologies. THE FABELMANS begins at a crowded movie theater at night. Husband and wife Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) have brought their little boy, Sammy, to an exclusive showing of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). These are passionate parents, excitedly discussing this mouth-dropping extravaganza he’s about to see on a big screen. The movie starts, and in the scene when the train crashes into a car causing a massive pile-up with loud explosions and fake but adorably fake special effects, Sammy is….SO AMAZED. It’s official. He’s found his passion: movies. When you’re as big a movie geek as I am, you know the feeling. You know that first movie you saw which positively stunned you in the most inexplicable way. You can’t describe it.
The Fabelmans are a Jewish family living in a not-very-Jewish-at-all part of the neighborhood. (Their house is the only one without Christmas decorations.) Sammy has three younger sisters, his grandmother, Hadassah (Jeannie Berlin), and “Uncle” Bennie (Seth Rogen), his father’s best friend who has no relation but is so close that he’s practically family. For each night of Hanukkah, Sammy is gifted a toy train from a train set. He is soon given a Bolex camera from his mother. Instantly, Sammy is recreating the scene from The Greatest Show on Earth. He sets up his train set and places a toy car in the middle. He adds smoke and gets so into the moment that he completely destroys the train set. His parents don’t even mind. That is perhaps the biggest surprise in Spielberg and Kushner’s script: Burt and Mitzi’s relationship with their son. These aren’t your typically stern parents who think their kid should be doing more with his life besides playing with a camera. There are scenes where Burt does tell Sammy that he should focus on other important things, but he never encourages him to stop filming. These parents love their child, and they want him to be happy.
Some years pass and Sammy (played by an extraordinary Gabriel LaBelle), now a teenager, is still making movies in his spare time. He goes to the desert, recreates a western with his sisters and friends, and presents it to his whole town. He goes on a camping trip with his family and Bennie and just films whatever he wants. Is there a story he’s trying to make? Not necessarily. He’s just playing with his camera. There’s almost a type of adrenaline with filming. When Mitzi drunkenly begins dancing in front of car headlights in the woods, he grabs his camera. It’s like that moment of, “Oh my god! This is good footage! Just get the camera!” There’s a drive to filmmaking. You see something cool, then grab that camera.
Now, you may be thinking, what happens in the movie? I won’t say, but there is…some drama. I mean, this is a family, after all, and every family has some drama. If you’ve studied Spielberg’s biography by heart, you may know what happens in THE FABELMANS. My spoiler-free description of the plot is that Burt and Mitzi definitely have a complicated relationship. Burt is a computer engineer who continues to move his family over the country, much to the annoyance of his wife. Mitzi herself is like a comic book character. When I saw THE FABELMANS, there were a lot of people who said Michelle Williams was “so weird” in the film. Mitzi is a free spirit to the extreme. She wants to smile, dance, and play her piano until sunrise. She wants adventure. In one scene, she adopts a pet monkey for the house because she says she “needed a laugh.” What?! (I do wonder if this actually happened in Spielberg’s life or if it’s fictionalized.)
Sammy himself navigates his own ups and downs as he grows up. He moves to a new town where he’s the only Jew in school. He is ridiculed by the nastiest antisemitic bullies in the world, calling him “Bagelhead” instead of “Fabelman.” He meets his other grandmother’s brother, Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch, who is only in the movie for 10 minutes but steals the show and deserves an Oscar!), a quirky, energetic soul who acts and tells Sammy that if he wants to be an artist, there’s a chance he’ll push his family farther away. Sammy also falls for a peculiar, very Catholic classmate named Monica (Chloe East, so funny) who has portraits of Jesus all over her room and makes them pray before they kiss. Sammy’s relationship with his parents – particularly his mother – sets the story in motion a little halfway into the movie, and the way it’s presented is so fascinatingly done. I wish I could say it, but I can’t! Just go into the theater surprised.
I guess my biggest regret with THE FABELMANS is that I didn’t jot down any of the quotes the characters say. Kushner and Spielberg’s dialogue brims with endless wit and remarkable prose. The movie is funny but also oddly fantastical. There’s this weird element of fantasy that the Fabelman family possesses. It’s no wonder Sammy wants to film everything. I lost track of the endless moments where I was just so amused by the Fabelmans’ actions. In one scene, Mitzi performs a piece on her piano for the family, but her long fingernails keep tapping the keys. Everyone laughs, and then Burt and Bennie jokingly pick her up and try to cut her fingernails themselves. Let’s also not forget the monkey. Fantastical is the only word that comes to mind, and it’s the most unforgettable thing about THE FABELMANS.
There is a lot of whimsy but also pain in this movie. I saw an interview Seth Rogen gave recently where he said that Spielberg cried a lot on set while they were filming, which isn’t surprising. I can’t imagine how cathartic the making of this movie must have been, to go to set and see actors dressed as your parents, friends, antisemitic bullies, etc. Spielberg has put all his heart and soul into what may be his most personal movie to date. It is a wild, lively experience, one that will stick with me forever.
THE FABELMANS is now playing in select theaters.