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The Fabelmans is a story about family and movies. It’s a movie directed by Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones, Jaws, Jurassic Park) about a young Jewish boy who falls in love with cinema and starts to create his own home movies as a way of connecting with his family, but also as a way to hide from and understand them eventually breaking apart. While the characters are fictional, it’s heavily inspired by Speilberg’s real-life childhood, right down to having an engineer dad, a pianist mom, and three sisters. The movie is even dedicated to his parents Arnold Speilberg and Leah Adler.
In some ways it’s a very predictable movie to win big nominations at the Academy Awards including best picture, it’s filled with all the stereotypes Oscar’s judges love, a movie about making movies, working in Hollywood, and based on a true story and yet, I can’t say this praise isn’t deserved. Underneath the flash and effects, The Fabelmans grounds the cinema experience in the real world and shows firsthand how movies affect people, how they bring people up, and how they let them down all through the eyes of a beautifully acted family. If you’ve ever had an interest in cinema, this movie gets why.
Watching a train crash
Parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi Fableman take their one son Sam Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) to the cinema the watch ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’. From this, a spark ignites in young Sammy, wishing to recreate the train crash in the film. From here he uses his father’s camera to film more scenes, putting together costume effects, and plotlines with the help of his sisters and friends. His father thinks it’s just a fun hobby but his mother sees it as something more meaningful, the start of a rift forming between the two.
The family soon moves to Arizona with Burt’s jovial best friend Benny (Seth Rogan) and later moves again to California. The years go by as you watch Sam slowly go up encountering bullying, love, and the gradual breakdown of his family, and all throughout it, he makes movies.
At its core the Fabelmans is a coming-of-age family drama, taking place over the span of years as Sam grows from a boy to a young adult and the shifting dynamics of his home and school life. For the most part, the film devotes a lot of time to slice-of-life scenes with the family spending time together, going on picnics, and camping trips, and even buying a monkey. These do a good job of fleshing out the different characters and just letting them goof off in that classic cozy small-town America feel of some of Speilbergs previous movies like E.T. It’s cute and it gets you all the more invested when they’re but through hardship.
A Love of Cinema
This brings me to my favorite part of the movie as a film buff, it shows a lot of the beauty of cinema. Through Sam’s home movies, you see how old film was literally put together tape by tape, how he experiments with special effects, and how he hones the craft. Seeing Sam cut up and stitch together old film reels, what directors actually had to do back in the day before digital recording was a fascinating experience.
More importantly, however, it shows the emotional impact of films. The film presents how they can inspire or change them as a person just by showing the world in a new light. (Minor Spoilers) There is a part near the end where Sam screens a film of a school beach trip where one of his bullies is shown as an amazing athlete and person. The bully ends up crying, he both loves and hates that he’ll never live up to how amazing he looked in the film.
It reminds me a lot of Satoshi Kon’s work (Millenium Actress, Paprika) where the films serve as a reflection on real people and like how life inspires art, the art inspires their lives. I found it to be really beautiful and a good reminder of why movies are important in the first place.
The Family
The Fabelmans is further held together by some amazing performances from the entire cast. Gabriel LaBelle does amazing as Sam, showing the awkwardness of being a teenager yet also maturity and vulnerability well in tackling the harsher subjects of divorce and bullying. He’s able to play off each of the other characters perfectly and sell every scene of how much the events and movies are affecting him. It’s palpable just how much he wants to make movies but how it hurts him as it clashes with the needs of his family.
As for the parents, Michelle Williams gives a powerful performance as the protective and caring Mtizi Fabelman. Even as she keeps smiling the subtle heavier emotions she is able to bring in make for a layered character that’s unpredictable yet profusely sympathetic.
The father played by Paul Dano was quite a surprise as well. I’m so used to seeing him play younger characters (it was quite a surprise to learn he was 38 this year) yet he plays the awkward yet well-meaning Bart very naturally. He’s far more emotionally distanced compared to his wife but you can see his good intentions and attempts to keep it together even as his marriage falls apart.
Good Performances All Around
There are two many side characters to mention, from the eccentric uncle played by Judd Hirsch to Sam’s Jesus-loving girlfriend played by Chloe East, but the biggest highlight for me was Seth Rogan as Bennie Loewy, Burt’s best friend who spends so much time with the family he basically their surrogate uncle.
Most people know Rogan as a comedian and while he brings laughs to the picture they’re often somber and melancholy, a man trying to comfort those around him hiding back the guilt he feels for his own misdeeds. The role proves that he can handle more mature material and that Donkey Kong is very much in safe hands.
The Fabelmans
You can tell that The Fabelmans is a very personal movie for Speilberg. It’s essentially him retelling his childhood, the good times, the bad times, and why exactly he thinks movies are so special. That personal touch is what makes the movie feel so genuine and emotional. It brilliantly portrays the struggles of a young Jewish director and the complex interrelationships he forms with his family and friends.
It has that classic Speilburg charm with likable characters boosted by excellent performances. Sam, his parents, and even Seth Rogan, all show just how much range they have as actors with heartfelt roles that make each character feel like a real person.
It’s a movie that perfectly captures what makes the movies so enchanting and alongside family drama, and growing up, I feel that’s something everyone can relate to, at least a little.
The Fabelmans is screening in cinemas across Malaysia.
The Review
PROS
- Beautiful coming of age story and family drama
- High quality performances from the entire main cast
- An insightful look at the joys of cinema
