*** Caution. Spoilers ahead ***
Lights, camera, action. Not many directors have earned such high praise and recognition as Steven Spielberg. From Jaws to E.T. to Indiana Jones and on, the Jurassic Park director has wowed audiences for over five decades with some of the most innovative filmmaking the world has ever seen.
We all remember that “thing” as a child that made us pivot to chase our dreams. For Spielberg, as shown in the fictionalized account of his childhood, it was a movie. The Fabelmans is the director’s love letter to the Hollywood of yesterday when filmmaking was done on home cameras, and job opportunities still came by mail. It all makes you a bit nostalgic for a time when what you saw on the big screen held greater power than a video you can find on your phone.
The Fabelmans vividly details what is assumingly the West Side Story director’s life, depicting a young Jewish boy (Sammy Fabelman) who struggles with his move from the East Coast to the West Coast in the 1950s and finds solace in making his own movies. Gabriel LaBelle (who bears a decent resemblance to how you would imagine a young Spielberg) carries a warm and comedic presence on screen, making it easy to relate to his childhood tribulations.
The film shines a light on what Spielberg does best – storytelling – and how his family and upbringing influenced his creativity. Paul Dano plays the father (Burt), who, as a scientist involved in engineering state-of-the-art technology, picks up and moves Sammy, his mom, two sisters, and his best friend across the country to chase his own dream. Michelle Williams plays Sammy’s mom (Mitzi), and Seth Rogen plays Bennie (Burt’s funny best friend). Judd Hirsch plays Sammy’s eccentric, heavy-accented Uncle Boris, who, while he only appears for a small part of the movie, makes a big impact on Sammy’s life and the film.
LaBelle, Dano, and Hirsch shine in their parts, respectively, but it’s Michelle Williams who steals every scene. The quality in Williams that is rightfully earning some Oscar buzz is the same quality Spielberg lovingly details about his mother. She is sincere, mysterious, unassuming, and has much more going on underneath than meets the eye.
As the movie moves the Fabelman family from the East Coast to Arizona to eventually Northern California, they’re met with personal identity struggles, relationship woes, awakenings, loss, heartache, and antisemitism. As Spielberg does in his films, and what would seem in reality, is turn strife into comedy while wrapping life lessons into a perfectly-curated story that delivers a few pretty poignant messages.
Sammy’s awakening comes from seeing his first movie in a theater (The Greatest Show on Earth), as he is quickly met with curiosity, leading him to recreate the film’s crash scene with his father’s movie camera. He is encouraged by his homemaker mother (Williams), who has buried her dreams of living a life as a classically trained pianist only to nurture her son’s passions. Sammy has obviously inherited his mother’s genius, and while he fights not to follow in his father’s science-based footsteps, it’s pretty clear by the end of the movie he has taken a few important qualities from his dear old dad as well.
Spielberg and co-writer Tony Kushner (West Side Story, Angels in America) do a terrific job bringing each character to life. Dano gives an earnest performance, Rogen (in his true-to-form Seth Rogen way) is both funny and sincere, Hirsch is delightfully entertaining, and Williams comes across as poetry on screen. Spielberg has detailed his origin story in interviews over the years, but it’s still rewarding to watch the moving parts of what made the award-winning director become the star he is today.
Stories about Hollywood are always fascinating, particularly to people fascinated by entertainment. The Fabelmans leans into that. It reveals how one of the world’s greatest directors grew to become a leading voice in film. The movie looks at a curious young Jewish boy dealing with adversity – both at home and school – and shows how he uses wit and creativity to forge his own path in life, regardless of the odds stacked against him. In the end, Spielberg’s story comes down to not giving up on your dreams. Be tenacious. Figure out what you love to do, work hard at it, and persevere. The truth is, you never know what will happen. We all have to start somewhere. And sometimes that somewhere is a movie theater.
The Fabelmans is in theaters now.
