Spielberg turns camera on his youth in intimate memoir
“I need to see them crash.” These are the first fated words of a future filmmaker, Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), whispered to his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), after he has crashed his toy train, inspired by his first big-screen cinematic experience, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Mitzi instantly recognizes that re-creating the train crash is a way for Sammy to exert control over the fear he felt during the movie, and so she presents him with his father’s 8mm camera to capture and replay the crash. With this lesson on art as catharsis imprinted in his young mind, a movie director is born.
In the deeply personal “The Fabelmans,” legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg turns his lens on his own upbringing, his childhood journey to becoming a filmmaker and his parents. What could have been some kind of auto-hagiography is a playful, honest and gracious childhood memoir that derives its universal lessons from its specificity.
“The Fabelmans” is the story of how a filmmaker comes to be, the product of an artist and an engineer, and a reckoning with, or setting the record straight about, his parents’ relationship, which has been shared before in interviews and in the 2017 documentary “Spielberg.” It is also, on a more spiritual level, an attempt to capture the drive to be an artist and what following that dream entails, and about what it means to see or be seen through a camera.
Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner pack a lot into “The Fabelmans,” but first and foremost, it is funny and warm, and complicated in an authentically familial way. Much of this comes from Williams’ performance, which is specific and big, but always feels real. Mitzi is wild and wonderful, a concert pianist who feeds her family on paper plates because she refuses to do dishes and risk her hands. She is fascinating, frustrating, immensely loving and lovable, and ultimately, unknowable, especially by her husband, Bert (Paul Dano), a sensible engineer working on the development of computers.
Sammy (played as a teen by Gabriel LaBelle) knows his mother, because he sees her, through the viewfinder of camera, and later, winding through footage. What he sees he does not always like, especially when it comes to Mitzi’s friendship with Bert’s best friend Benny (Seth Rogen), but Sammy and Mitzi are too similar, possessed of an artist’s heart that cannot be denied. In their darkest moments, they are both “selfish and scared,” as his sister Reggie (Julia Butters) shouts at him, but Mitzi’s dreams, and her dreams deferred, become Sammy’s guiding light as he fumbles toward his calling.
A film so intimate and revealing about one’s own family could end up being maudlin, but Spielberg’s filmmaking is lively and even mischievous here. Working with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg deploys a signature fluid camera style. The approach isn’t just endearing, but a reminder that Spielberg’s still just a kid who loves making movies as he loves his family, as messy as it might be.
With “The Fabelmans,” Spielberg asks us to have a little fun and to remember our childhood love of the movies. But he also makes a profound statement about how he sees others through his filmmaking, and in that process how he himself is seen. In this delightfully meta memoir, he allows us to see him, too.
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use) Running time: 2:31
How to watch: In theaters Nov. 11