"The Fabelmans" review, The Age of Movies

Any Spielberg fan knows these beats: an early fascination with cinema; the move to Arizona; a difficult parental dynamic, with a driven father and loving-but-conflicted mother; ambitious 8mm films made with sisters, neighbors, and anyone else willing to lend a hand; a much less pleasant move from Arizona to California; teenage years fueled by creativity, but also impacted by a feeling of outsider status; and, ultimately, the first steps into a world he would eventually dominate. The Fabelmans checks all boxes, but it is not merely Portrait of Spielberg as a Young Man. This is also a warm, moving drama about the need to make art, whatever its cost. Sam (Gabriel LaBelle), the Spielberg stand-in, sees no other option. Filmmaking is not, as his father maintains, “a hobby.” What might be most striking about The Fabelmans is how normal the experiences of young Sam play for the audience. It begins in 1952 as Sam’s parents, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), bring the boy to his first big-screen movie—fittingly, the widescreen spectacle of enjoyable hokum that is The Greatest Show on Earth. What hits young Sam the hardest is the unforgettable train crash.  

Burt is a complex figure––loving yet stern, and different from Mitzi in almost every way. Burt keeps his emotions inside, whereas Mitzi is all emotion, even when it hurts. Sam carries bits of all traits, sometimes seeming closely linked to his father, other times his mother. It is fascinating to watch Spielberg pull back the curtain on his life as a child, warts and all. The entire family contributes to Sam’s filmmaking, even more so once they move to Arizona. This land of dry heat and desert is ideal for Westerns and war movies, both of which Sam makes with striking ingenuity. By this point the act of moviemaking courses through Sam’s veins. Indeed, as his mother’s brash uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) explains, the need to create art is in Sam’s genes. From this moment on Sam’s world becomes increasingly splintered. His parents face a marriage crisis and Sam discovers that the camera sometimes captures moments meant to be hidden. Things become even thornier when the family uproots once again, this time to California.

It is best not to spoil how the film concludes, but it is both surprisingly subtle and dramatically bold. Spielberg avoids the over-emotional payoff that has often upended the late stages of his recent films. What’s onscreen is only the conclusion of the first part of its protagonist’s life. So, smartly, Spielberg wraps things up with a delightful sequence and a genuinely winning final gag. Every Spielberg feature, from The Sugarland Express to West Side Story, reveals elements of its creator’s passions. Not until now, though, has Spielberg filmed what is essentially a memoir. Sam’s story is universal, but the real emotional pull from The Fabelmans comes from knowing that everything here––the short films created with “spit and glue,” the family strife, even high school bullying––led to an ability to create some of the most successful and beloved movies ever made. Source: slantmagazine.com

When we go to a play or a movie we expect a heightened, stylized language; the dull realism of the streets is unendurably boring. It’s the subversive gesture carried further, the moments of excitement sustained longer and extended into new meanings. We learn to dread Hollywood “realism” and all that it implies. Maybe you just want to look at people on the screen and know they’re not looking back at you, that they’re not going to turn on you and criticize you. I think violence is objectionable when it makes you identify with the killer. There’s a lot of violence at the beginning of The Grand Illusion, but you’re appalled by it. Whereas in a Clint Eastwood movie, you identify with the guy with the biggest gun, not the victim. That’s a big difference emotionally. I’ve walked out on movies I found hopeless. Harold Pinter’s Betrayal drove me crazy—people talking in these precise phrases over and over again. Fellini’s Casanova drove me out too. I mean, you’re still a human being, even if you are a critic.

I thought the first half of Conspiracy Theory (1997) was terrific, then it fell apart. Movies often start with a fascinating situation that they don’t know how to resolve. Directors are very manipulative people. They have the opportunity to be cruel and domineering, and can’t resist it. The different elements that go into movies—music, cinematography, actors, design—get to you very strongly. That’s why so many educated people disapprove of movies; they’re not used to giving themselves over to that much emotion. They prefer the distance they can keep in legitimate theater. Part of the appeal of movies is the sensuality of the actors and actresses—their faces give us pleasure. The symmetry of their beauty is often very appealing. They’re more beautiful than the people we see in life, and they give us standards of beauty and feeling. 

Their emotions can transform us. Someone like Greta Garbo opened up a generation of moviegoers to a kind of sensuality they didn’t experience elsewhere. There’s something about a great actress on screen that can be extraordinary. Garbo had something else plus beauty. When you watch her in the scene in A Woman of Affairs, where she inhales a bouquet of roses, you think you’ve never seen anyone inhale so completely. It’s not comparable to what goes on the stage. –"The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael" (2011) by Pauline Kael and Sanford Schwartz