In ‘The Fabelmans,’ Steven Spielberg looks back in vanity
A movie by one of Hollywood’s most successful directors that’s based on his early life begins, appropriately enough, at a movie theater and ends in a movie back lot.
“The Fabelmans” is clearly a very personal film for Steven Spielberg and it’s as much a coming-of-age journey as a form of expensive therapy with John Williams offering lovely mood music.
The script — Spielberg reteams with playwright Tony Kushner — charts both fledgling director Sammy Fabelman’s first 20 years as well as the cracks appearing in his parents’ agonizing marriage. The focus sometimes gets a bit blurry, to be honest and the whole thing often doesn’t add up to much.
For a film by a director about a director, the main character is surprisingly callow. We first meet a frightened little Sammy Fabelman outside a New Jersey movie theater that is playing Cecil B. DeMille’s
1952 classic “The Greatest Show on Earth.” He’s suddenly too scared to see his first motion picture.
“Movies are dreams you never forget,” says his mother, a frustrated concert pianist played by Michelle Williams, trying to coax him in. “Dreams are scary,” he replies.
That film — with a horrific train crash which traumatizes the boy — changes Fabelman forever. Over the next decades, filmmaking is his passion, despite his engineer father’s pooh-poohing it as a mere hobby. Why Sammy must direct, we are told, may have something to do with his wanting to be in control.
A big wet valentine to filmmaking, “The Fabelmans” fits into the latest wave of directors looking backward, including Alejandro Iñárritu’s “Bardo,” Charlotte
Wells’ “Aftersun,” Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” And Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age “Almost Famous” just landed on Broadway in musical form.
The movie ends with a warning to the young filmmaker from no less than the great director John Ford (a hysterical cameo from David Lynch). “This business will rip you apart,” he snarls. And yet Fabelman is overjoyed to connect with his hero and doesn’t listen.
“The Fabelmans,” a Universal Pictures release that opens in limited release on Friday and wide Nov. 23, is rated PG-13 for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use. Running time: 151 minutes.