Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”

The Fabelmans (2022)

A potentially great film obscured by sugar-coated and stagey visuals with great performances keeping its head above water

A film about the passion for cinema is something that’s always chimed with me from Fellini’s “8½” to Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso”, Burton’s “Ed Wood” and Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind”. (I’m also looking forward to Nolan’s “Empire of Light”) I enjoyed “The Fabelmans” but its constant cleanliness and bright, low-contrast lighting doesn’t marry well with the sometimes poignant story and what could have been great is reduced to just good. Perhaps he’s trying to mimic the mainstream cinematic style of the period but in doing so puts a distance between the audience and some truly interesting characters. Given his previous film was West Side Story, perhaps inertia kept the style going?

Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as the parents at the head of the Fabelman family are extraordinary giving nuanced performances that raise the film to another level. Likewise our central character Sam Fabel is great in his teenage years as played by Gabriel LaBelle(a doppleganger of Spielberg himself). Cameos from Judd Hirsch as great-uncle Boris and David Lynch as John Ford are fantastic. I’ve talked about some great childhood performances recently, but unfortunately the young Sam Fabel is not among them which is surprising as Spielberg has a good track record of getting great performances out of kids from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “War of the Worlds”.

The story itself is really something more universal than the love of filmmaking and asks questions around the balance of personal priorities and desires, and what’s expected of us as well as touching upon racism and mental illness. Difficult choices need to be made and no definitive answer is given but some some interesting ideas are thrown into the mix particularly by Hirsch and Lynch’s characters.

For about the first half hour of its 2.5 hours running time, I had a hard time with the stagey aura but as things became more unpredictable, I enjoyed it more and there are some stand outs in a generally bland visual style but again, the central performances are so good. I really wish I could have seen this film with less gloss and more realism; it could have been great.