This is an extended review of my original thoughts from TIFF, dated 09.11.22
First things first, you’ve seen the trailer for “The Fabelmans.” It’s exactly what you think it will be. There are no surprises or narrative risks, it’s quite literally “The Steven Spielberg Story.”
What to make of Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”? A 150 minute love letter to his mother, and, more annoyingly, to himself. The reviews have been positive, some have reservations, others don’t. I definitely think it’s an at-times fascinating, but frustratingly flawed personal statement.
The one movie ‘Fabelmans’ most resembles is Woody Allen’s much-shorter “Radio Days” in its gleefully naïve eye towards how things used to be 50 years ago and in its nostalgic look at a medium that is somewhat “dying.” Anyone who grew up watching movies will surely be taken by the first hour, which has Spielberg avatar Sammy (Gabrielle LaBelle) watching “The Greatest Show on Earth” with his parents and falling head over heels for celluloid. He buys a train set and films his own train crash with dad’s camera.
Driven by a very emotional, and catchy, John Williams piano score, the thick of the drama is set in New Jersey, Arizona and California. This is more a movie filled with episodes rather than plot. It’s very ruminative. There’s a lot of nifty scenes involving Sammy shooting home movies with friends. However, a clumsily built bullying subplot only enhances the forced nature of some of these episodes in the more problematic second half.
A highlight is a tender scene between Spielberg and an absolute scene-stealing Judd Hirsch (playing his uncle Boris). It hits home. Best Supporting Actor heat for Hirsch? I definitely think so. Despite what is essentially a 10-minute cameo, you remember Hirsch the most out of any of the performances. Yes, Michelle Williams is, of course, luminous, but boy does she “act” in this movie. Almost to a fault. Her Mitzi is a caricature of a tempestuous, eccentric housewife.
Seth Rogen plays Bennie, the “fake uncle,” Sammy’s dad’s best friend. He and Williams’s Mitzi have an affair. It kills the family dynamic. The scene where Sammy cuts together and screens a movie, for Mitzi, of her affair with Bennie is a deeply effective moment. Too bad Spielberg decides to shy away from the actual drama that must have occurred when shit hit the fan and his parents got divorced. That’s never shown on-screen.
Things get a little less involving when Sammy and the family move to Northern California in the second half. Sammy gets bullied in high school, traces of anti-Semitism start to show with nicknames such as “Bagelman” thrown at him. Even more peculiar is Spielberg’s decision to tackle his first girlfriend, a Jesus-loving farcical beauty who believes Sammy just needs some saving.
We all knew this would be praised and it has some very good stretches throughout its 2 and a half hour runtime, but it also tends to meander. Spielberg skeptics will remain skeptics. His fans will remain fans. This isn’t a game-changer by any stretch of the imagination. It is a deeply self-indulgent work on the part of the filmmaker. Was his life story actually worth telling? If he wasn’t Steven Spielberg then this story would not be remotely as interesting. The drama is fairly inert and, because it just means so much to him, Spielberg doesn’t seem to realize that.
Spielberg doesn’t get deep enough under the surface of his life. It’s a watered-down version as only Hollywood and himself could have delivered it. The film does however end with a scene worthy of the cinematic time-capsule, David Lynch as Cigar-smoking John Ford. [B]