The Fabelmans (M, 150 minutes)
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5 stars
This film isn't titled The Spielbergs, but it could have been. Director Steven Spielberg co-wrote (with Tony Kushner) this warm, sprawling, bittersweet film about the ups and downs of a Jewish-American family, seen from the point of view of the son, an aspiring filmmaker. And much of it is acknowledged to be drawn from Spielberg's life, viewed with the benefit of hindsight.
But giving the story an overlay of fiction allows for a few dramatic liberties and inventions and perhaps sufficient emotional distancing for Spielberg to tell the story, which deals with themes like personal responsibility and control, the drive to create art, and the mysteries behind talent and love and happiness.
While that might sound heavy going, it's not, and the film's two and a half hour running time doesn't feel long at all. It might particularly engage film buffs but the film is of wider accessibility and appeal. It deserves to get many more people than the small but attentive Dendy audience at the first session.
In the first scene of The Fabelmans, young Sammy (Mateo Zoryan), is taken to see his first movie, Cecil B. DeMille's Oscar-winning 1952 circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth.
He's particularly affected by the climactic train crash: it gives him a nightmare and he recreates it with a model train set, beginning a longtime battle to take control over things in his life. He's scolded for this and his mother suggests he film a crash with his father's 8mm film camera so he can replay it to deal with the trauma - but, already the budding auteur, he doesn't just do it once, but repeatedly, from multiple angles he painstakingly cuts together for maximum effect.
When we meet them, the Fabelmans are a bustling, loving middle-class family - mother, father, and three (later four) kids - the eldest a son (Sammy/Steven Spielberg) the rest daughters.
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Father Burt (Paul Dano) is an engineer, quiet and practical; his wife Mitzi (Michelle Williams), a pianist who became a mother and homemaker, is more imaginative and emotionally expressive. And Burt's jovial friend "Uncle" Benny (Seth Rogen) is around a lot. When the Fabelmans move states to advance Burt's career, Benny also goes.
Sammy's fascination with filmmaking grows and he begins using his father's camera to make other movies - not just home movies but - starring his sisters (who as characters don't otherwise get a lot to do) and his friends. The films - a Western, a war movie - become more ambitious and better made. The teenage Sammy is played by Gabrielle LaBelle, like Zoryan an apt and appealing choice.
Burt indulges his son's filmmaking but regards it as a hobby; his mother, a fellow creative spirit, is more supportive of his burgeoning ambitions.
A visit from a real uncle, Boris (Judd Hirsch) proves pivotal. Boris, who worked in show business, is a fascinating figure to Sammy and counsels - or is it warns? - him about how a gift like his must be used but that committing to it will mean neglecting other aspects of his life, such as family. And art can cause anguish of its own. After shooting a family camping trip, while editing the footage Sammy discovers a secret that is shattering not just for him but for the whole family.
Spielberg apparently long blamed his father for his parents' divorce: this film - dedicated to both his mother and father - seems to be an act of love and apology, a public way of acknowledging things were more complicated than they had previously seemed. Maybe it's yet another example of the director imposing control over life, too - as much as it's possible.
Frequent collaborator John Williams does the score, which is low-key and sparse: a lot of the music is from film scores and classical music.
Spielberg has acknowledged that when recreating the films he made as a boy, he's improved them in the versions made for this movie. And maybe he did the same for his real life, too.
But it's a story worth telling and worth experiencing, and its recognition of the complexities of families, love and art resonates.