[Film Review] The Fabelmans (2022)
Spielberg’s most personal film to date, THE FABELMANS is an eventful recount of his salad days, how he has found his vocation in cinema before entering adulthood. The maestro’s avatar is Sammy (LaBelle, a bracing discovery, and Zoryan as a pre-teen), a sixteen years old Jewish boy who unintentionally discovers a secret that will lead to the eventual dissolution of his parents’ marriage, he also has to ward off antisemitic bullies and experiences his first love in the school, all the while setting his passion in filmmaking in ineluctable motion.
A coming-of-age story set in the USA during 1950s, THE FABELMANS, is more than anything, a texturally captivating period drama transfused in an emerald green shade and is operated by the most proficient and excellent experts for all its kinetic, visual and auditory conceptualization and actualization. After all, “sloppiness” is an epithet one can never chuck at Spielberg and co. The film is a sublimely touching in Sammy’s two-handers, either with his mother Mitzi (Williams) or dad Burt (Dano). The family dissension is at first lateral, although as Burt’s mother, a spry Jeannie Berlin curtly remarks that Burt’s best friend and colleague Bennie (Rogen) isn’t her grandchildren’s uncle, a throwaway aperçu only lets on the marital discontentment in hindsight.
It is unfathomable for a young child to entertain the idea that their parents are not perfectly in love with each other. So when Sammy accidentally finds out Mitzi and Bennie’s “more than friends” intimacy through the footage he has shot, it plunges him into forging a new perspective on his parents, seeing them as flawed, conflicted, real persons. A mere housewife cannot quench Mitzi’s artistic aspiration and Burt has too musty a soul to allow her to be the best version of herself. It is a mismatched matrimony of an essentially good-natured but ill-sorted couple. THE FABELMANS endeavors to present to audience a divorce without rancor, and a parent’s undiminished love to their offspring is irrelevant to their marital status. Whether it is Sammy’s heated confrontation with Mitzi, or his understated rapport with Burt, they all carry a hefty weight for an adolescent’s baby steps to brave the grown-up world as we know it.
In that sense, both Williams and Dano are terrific in their respective roles, although the former is designed as a co-lead since her relationship with Sammy takes up the lion’s share of the screen time. A bob-chic Williams emanates such a degree of radiance and earnestness that we cannot take our eyes off her. Both Mitzi’s hurt and liberation are of equal resonances through her vivid, finely modulated interpretation. Even without the script’s support, we are rooting for Mitzi simply because Williams is irresistibly persuasive in the department of affect. Whereas Dano, morphing into a daddy bod and conveying an avuncular air, surprisingly carries off Burt’s nondescriptness to his advantage, and makes it a distinction of affection (by the same token, Rogen’s Bennie is err on the side of looking hangdog). It is important to stress that Burt is not a victim, Mitzi is the one who wanders, but he is not entirely blameless for the causation. For that matter, Spielberg is far too politic to impute blame on either sex.
A side note about two notable cameos, David Lynch’s one-eyed John Ford impression is more anecdotal than inspiring, but Judd Hirsch’s granduncle Boris, foreshadowed by Mitzi receives a warning from a nightmare, barges in like a force of nature, illuminating about the choice between choosing art or family, is so impressive that he even purloins an Oscar nomination from Dano. A travesty can still make viewers scratch their heads.
In the event, THE FABELMANS is another billet-doux to the incomparable magic of the silver screen from a name director. Spielberg is most articulate in the case of the high school bully Logan Hall (Rechner), with whom Sammy squares via the power of cinema, namely, the camera’s versatile ability to tell a story. It is so true that a spectator’s perception can be unconsciously manipulated by the preconceived, collective visual-audial arrangements, which is a cautionary reminder that “reality” is something cannot be 100 percent captured in the art of cinema.
referential entries: Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY (2021, 7.1/10), THE POST (2017, 7.8/10); Damien Chazelle’s BABYLON (2022, 7.8/10).
Title: The Fabelmans
Year: 2022
Genre: Drama
Country: USA, India
Language: English, Russian
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner
Music: John Williams
Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Editors: Sarah Broshar, Michael Kahn
Cast:
Gabriel LaBelle
Michelle Williams
Paul Dano
Seth Rogen
Julia Butters
Keeley Karsten
Sam Rechner
Oakes Fegley
Chloe East
Isabelle Kusman
Judd Hirsch
Jeannie Berlin
Robin Bartlett
Mateo Zoryan
Alina Brace
Birdie Borria
Sophia Kopera
Stephen Matthew Smith
James Urbaniak
Greg Grunberg
David Lynch
Jan Hoag
Rating: 8.1/10
