Miss Flicks

The Fabelmans: Film Review

Steven Spielberg is one of my favourite directors of all time (Jurassic Park is my #1 movie) so I was floored by The Fabelmans, an intimate retelling of his childhood.

The story is told through the eyes of Sammy Fabelman (mostly Gabriel LaBelle), who grows up in New Jersey in a Jewish family consisting of electrical engineer Burt (Paul Dano), pianist-turned-housewife Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and three sisters, while his dad’s best friend “Uncle” Bennie (Seth Rogen) is usually always there. It depicts his early years making increasingly ambitious movies with his family and friends, the family’s move to Arizona and then California and his troubled time in high school. The wannabe filmmaker learns a shocking secret about his mother and keeps it quiet to save the family.

This is a very different story from Spielberg. He’s given us adventures about dinosaurs, sharks, aliens and a whip-cracking archaeologist over the years but with The Fabelmans, he has turned inward and made a smaller-scale domestic drama about his own life. The film, written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, is called semi-autobiographical, but he has openly admitted that it’s almost all true. It’s deeply personal and honest work and not one I would have expected from such a seasoned blockbuster director. I found it remarkable and quite moving that he wanted to shine a light on his imperfect upbringing and flawed parents.

Because I’m a huge fan of Spielberg’s work, I was fascinated learning about the beginnings of his filmmaking career, particularly as he recreates some of the shorts he made with his 8mm camera as a teenager. But it’s a coming-of-age film so those scenes are mixed in with stories about his family, his love life and the bullies at school. At two-and-a-half hours, the film might feel long to some but I didn’t notice the runtime, and when it ended, I felt slightly disappointed as I wanted to see Sammy start his career in earnest. Admittedly, it ends on a funny, hopeful note when Sammy is 18 and we already know the bright future that lies ahead of him.

Williams has been nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Mitzi and rightly so. Her performance as the deeply unhappy housewife is very touching and there were a couple of scenes where she expressed her sadness in the most subtle yet staggering way. I wish Dano had been nominated too because he is also brilliant as the calm, steady opposite of the larger-than-life Mitzi.

LaBelle is a likeable lead and does Spielberg justice, although he is outshone by his onscreen parents. I also want to give a shout-out to Julia Butters for being ace (as always) as his sister Reggie and David Lynch for his memorable cameo as director John Ford.

The Fabelmans is a beautiful, eye-opening and intimate portrait of Spielberg’s family life. It’s not quite the masterpiece I was expecting but I liked it a lot.

In cinemas from Friday 27th January