The Fabelmans

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

The trailer for this one popped up in my socials today. What is this mawkish, sentimental crap I was thinking as it unspooled. Took me a minute to realise that this is Steven Spielbergs mawkish, sentimental crap about his own childhood and burgeoning genius. Seems narcissistic in the extreme. I guess authors will often write their own auto biography and perhaps it makes sense for a film maker to do his autobiography in his own medium but still...

I could see Martin Scorcese doing that in a way that would be interesting. Given how well he shoots a 'domestic' I imagine he came from a very 'rambunctious' family and he could probably deliver something very real. But Spielberg doing that in the Spielberg style? With the soaring music and people gazing hopefully into the middle distance? Seems wrong and my toes are curling in anticipation.

[agent999 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close agent999]

This seems about 35 years too late for anyone to give a shit. Stand by Me and Almost Famous worked, but this looks like the sort of thing that should have been funded by Netflix where they can induldge him. Financing this as a theatrical release sounds crazy to me, but I guess it's Spielberg so they're willing to take a hit. It'll probably make a fortune now I've said that.

[Randy G Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Randy G]

I've heard from reports that the film is better than the trailer. I've been really digging late period Spielberg, Bridge of Spies is first rate for instance, so I think this could still be good if he doesn't overdo it.

Spielberg is at his weakest these days when he tries to revisit his best known mode of the past, genre action films and sentimentality, rather than the more muted, classic style of his late period.

[JoeS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JoeS]

THE FABELMANS (2022) For good or for ill, THE FABELMANS is exactly the memoir film you'd expect from Steven Spielberg. The renaming of his surname also hints at the mythic quality the legendary filmmaker brings to his oft-told origin story. More truth in advertising.

Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner base their screenplay on the formative years in the future Director's life from the time he saw his first movie in a theater at age 6 (DeMille's 1952 GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH) to his arrival in Hollywood in the late 60s. Spielberg's stand-in is named Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle and Mateo Francis-Deford at various ages) and his parents are Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams). Burt is an engineer who's work takes the family from New Jersey to Arizona to Northern California over the years. From a young age, Sammy is obsessed with making movies and by the time he is in Arizona he's directing his own mini-epics enlisting his sisters and friends to be his filmmaking troupe.

The heart of the film is, in many ways, those Arizona years. Not only did young Sammy first really learn how to use the camera to tell stories, but he also experienced his parents slowly drifting apart. In true cinematic style, Spielberg captures that breakdown in a riff on Antonioni's BLOW UP. Sammy's “Uncle Bennie” (Seth Rogan) becomes more and more than a friend of the family to Sammy's mom. A real uncle, Boris (Judd Hirsch), visits to dispense some oddball advice along the way. By the time the family moves to Northern California, the marriage is at the breaking point. Sammy is now in high school and has his first girlfriend (Chloe East) -- but also his first real brush with antisemitism. The Hollywood section is more of an epilogue, dominated by a cameo by David Lynch as the famously brusque John Ford.

Spielberg's direction keeps things moving even if those moves are pretty familiar and predictable by now (he's admitted that he's “improved” the directing chops of Sammy compared to himself at that age). Janusz Kaminski maintains authenticity by actually shooting on film (including 16mm for the amateur movies). John Williams, in what may be his last collaboration with Spielberg, contributes a lovely and sweet score. The Spielberg-Williams partnership is one of the greatest in in cinema rivaling Fellini-Rota and Hitchcock-Herrmann.

Rogan is very good as Bennie, managing to be both engagingly humorous and honest throughout. Dano and the pair of Sammys do well even if the script never really challenges them. Williams, a steady actress, has the most difficult role to maneuver. Spielberg obviously idealizes his mother in many ways. Williams resists such easy pigeonholing, but, she too is up against a thin script. It's a good performance, but compromised.

THE FABELMANS can't help but feel like a sentimental film. Spielberg does add a few moments here and there of grit, but, they never really disrupt his flow of mostly fond memories. The high school years are a mix of awkward humor and schmaltz. In the end, the film is a genteel summing up of Spielberg's early life, told with his trademark professionalism, but. lacking the true sense of wonder his finest films have brought to cinema. In the end, his own story is simply not as interesting as the ones he has dreamed up.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Well I went into this one expecting to hate it and gosh darn I know myself pretty well because I despised it. I'm not sure there's a smugger, more self indulgent opening to a film than when our heroes parents get down to his level to explain persistence of vision and the magic of the cinema to him. Stephen, everyone knows what persistance of vision is, you are not blowing our minds.

Michelle Williams is playing that most annoying of stereotypes, the crazy woman that everyone is inexplicably spellbound by. Nails on a chalkboard for me. And it's got the tone of a n 80s Spielberg children's film though no child in its right mind would be convinced to watch this 2 and a half hour session of self worship.

It does end well, ill give it that.

[Mark Tolch Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Mark Tolch]

Well I went into this one expecting to hate it and gosh darn I know myself pretty well because I despised it. I'm not sure there's a smugger, more self indulgent opening to a film than when our heroes parents get down to his level to explain persistence of vision and the magic of the cinema to him. Stephen, everyone knows what persistance of vision is, you are not blowing our minds.

Michelle Williams is playing that most annoying of stereotypes, the crazy woman that everyone is inexplicably spellbound by. Nails on a chalkboard for me. And it's got the tone of a n 80s Spielberg children's film though no child in its right mind would be convinced to watch this 2 and a half hour session of self worship.

It does end well, ill give it that.

Agreed. I will say that JoeS's review summed it up when he said this is exactly the Spielberg memoir film you expected.

I didn't like this at all. It's a pretentious as fuck take on a grown up Stand By Me.

[JoeS Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JoeS]

Agreed. I will say that JoeS's review summed it up when he said this is exactly the Spielberg memoir film you expected.

It's as if someone fed a ChapGPT program every Spielberg film and typed in: Create a Spielberg autobiographical film.

THE FABELMANS is that A.I. Production

[Barry M Super Fiend Find all posts View Profile Close Barry M]

It's a prototype a.i. programed to love but incapable of being loved. Such a lonely unreal boy.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

incapable of being loved.

92% on Rotten Tomatoes and hopefully a Best Picture Oscar Winner. I say hopefully because otherwise I don't see any stopping the Chevy product placement vehicle that is Barbie.

All I know is, if Spielberg keeps making films like that he's going to go blind

[ChicGandil Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close ChicGandil]

Didn't this already win some Oscars? Maybe Killers of The Flower Moon, Napoleon or Oppenheimer will get in Barbie's way.

[Dom D Spoon! Find all posts View Profile Close Dom D]

Didn't this already win some Oscars? Maybe Killers of The Flower Moon, Napoleon or Oppenheimer will get in Barbie's way.

You're quite right. The films been around longer than I thought. Lots of nominations, no wins.