The Fabelmans (2022)

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The Fabelmans (2022) – S. Spielberg

Here we have the reminiscences of a 75-year-old film director about his childhood and youth (this might be a genre unto itself).  We’ve all seen Spielberg’s films so it isn’t hard to make connections between aspects of his other films (divorce/broken families, suburbia, bullying) and his life story, as told here.  Michelle Williams and Paul Dano are the parents who move their family, including “Sammy” and his two older sisters, from New Jersey to Arizona and eventually to northern California, as the father pursues a career designing computers (from RKO to GE to IBM).  Of course, Sammy becomes interested in films and filmmaking as he grows up, using super-8 and then 16mm cameras to document important events in his life. He also makes gonzo fiction films with his friends and eventually makes a film for his high school graduating class (1964) documenting their excursion to a local beach (which has social ramifications for teenage Sam, Gabriel LaBelle).  But the primary thread that leads through the film is Sammy’s relationship with his parents and his realization that their own relationship has been compromised by his mother’s love for “Uncle” Bennie (Seth Rogen).  The principals manage this delicate emotional drama well, (although the early scenes with the young Sammy and his train set could have been shortened). It feels almost like another film when the family moves to California and the drama shifts to Sam’s experience of high school and away from the family: he dates a Jesus-loving teen, has run-ins with anti-Semitic bullies, and comes of age. As written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, the film ebbs and flows, with some wonderful moments, particularly the small bits provided to Judd Hirsh (crazy Uncle Boris) and David Lynch (director John Ford), but it also possesses the same faintly mawkish flavour that is also a hallmark of this director’s work.