Steven Spielberg has never been a director whose work was based on autobiography. I suppose his early film “E.T.” (1982), whose governing concept is based on an imaginary friend that Spielberg created after his parents’ divorce, comes closest to being a personal film. What Spielberg has done is keep the audience at a distance—offering few personal revelations or details—making blockbuster entertainments like “Indiana Jones” and “Jaws” or significant historical/political films like “Schindler’s List” and “The Color Purple.”
So, “The Fabelmans” is a real change of pace—a coming of age film (co-written with playwright Tony Kushner, “Lincoln”) that provides some insight into what psychologically shaped one of the world’s most famous directors. Here, his formative years are depicted semi-autobiographically in the person of young Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), growing up in an upper-middle-class, suburban, Jewish family with three sisters whom the film never bothers to bring to life. Much more important is his mother, Mitzi (Michele Williams in a showy role that demands a big, complex performance), who is dissatisfied with his father Burt (Paul Dano), a smart and successful scientist and engineer.
Mitzi is a former concert pianist who sees herself as an artist, but is now a homemaker and piano teacher. Burt is a caring father and loving husband, but unexciting and pedantic, lost in his own scientific work, controlling in his own quiet way, and seeing the world in more practical than artistic terms. Burt is no philistine, but sees film more in terms of photography and persistence of vision, while Mitzi tells him they are more about feeling and dreaming. In addition, Burt is blind to how deep Sammy’s passion for cinema goes.
Sammy (played with a great deal of nuance as an adolescent by Gabriel LaBelle) loves both parents, but has a bit of an Oedipal attachment to Mitzi who encourages his ambition to become a filmmaker. So, it’s traumatic for Sammy to discover that Mitzi is more taken romantically with the less talented Benny (Seth Rogan), supposedly Burt’s best friend. Benny is less intellectually gifted than Burt, but he is heartier, wittier, and more humanly connected. Spielberg never handles the triangle crudely, and depicts the differences between the men subtly without making one or the other more desirable. Nor does the film place the blame on either Burt or Mitzi for the failure of the marriage.
Michelle Williams’ Mitzi is the emotional center of the film, and though she may feel thwarted artistically, she is a committed mother and is extremely sensitive to Sammy’s yearnings. Williams’ performance can be captivating, but not sufficiently to turn her into this supposedly, manically incandescent being that everyone loves. Still, Spielberg handles the marital breakdown skillfully (if not with great emotional depth), as something inevitable, and keeps the melodramatics minimal.
One of the strengths of the film lies in Spielberg’s depiction of Sammy’s passion to become a filmmaker. His gifts are seen early when a young Sammy employs multiple, dynamic angles to capture model train crash, and uses editing to build suspense. Sammy’s ultimate success is not part of the film, but one can sense his confidence and his technical virtuosity in directing adolescent variations on genre films like John Ford’s “Who Shot Liberty Valance” and a high school documentary that scathingly puts down his anti-Semitic enemy and romanticizes his handsome nemesis in a manner that enrages him.
There is also a smart set piece where Sammy’s crusty granduncle Boris (Jud Hirsch)—a circus performer–comes to visit and probably too neatly lays out what it means to be an artist. He asserts that people that have talent must commit to it, not waste it; but the more fiercely they commit, the more they may neglect their loved ones, or feel as if they are. It’s a conflict that many artists face, and that usually leaves a legacy of guilt. I don’t know if Spielberg neglected his family, but clearly his commitment to making films is at the center of his life.
There is one section in this episodic film that probably should have been edited. When Sammy moves to California, he has a hard time fitting into his new jock-dominated high school because he’s small and nerdy and Jewish. He’s bullied, but Spielberg doesn’t make the anti-Semitism his alter ego faces a central theme. There’s a silly adolescent relationship with a Christian girl who takes an interest in Sammy because of his religious heritage. It lightens the film, but adds nothing to it.
In the film’s conclusion, Sammy is looking for a job in the industry and by chance is introduced to the gruff, great John Ford (David Lynch). Ford teaches him one lesson about being a director: “Discover where the horizon is.” The final image is a slick pan of Sammy skipping down the Hollywood lot past sound stages—conveying that there goes a boy who will ultimately master this world. Spielberg’s film may not project the painful lyricism of Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” or the beauty of Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” but in its well-constructed, commercial way, it has given us an intimation of how a leading Hollywood director was born.
