Movie Number 4 of 2023
The Movie: The Fabelmans
Cinema: The Rivoli, Camberwell
Stars: 5
People are talking about The Fabelmans. Is all the Oscars hype worth it you may ask. This little passion project of Steven Spielberg, loosely based on his family life.
The answer is yes.
This is a movie lover's movie, a love song to both Spielberg's family and to movie making and it is gorgeous.
In this film, Spielberg, with the help of Tony Kuchner, the noted screenwriter, provides a fictionalised account of his youth, from his childhood in New Jersey, to growing up in Arizona until his later youth in California. It also documents Spielberg's first forays into movie making, using his father's family movie camera, then moving up to bigger and better things.
Just as Hugo was Martin Scorcese's passion project about movie making, this is Spielberg' story, relation live with his fact-based, engineer father and arty mother (His father worked for IBM, his mother was a restauranteur and concert pianist). The eldest son, he was also there to be a brother to his three younger sisters, who got to appear in his early movies.
What got me about this was the subtleties if the story telling. From Bert Fabelman's (The ever-excellent Paul Dano) and his encouragement of his son Sam (Gabriel LaBelle, who's going to be somebody to watch). Then there's Mitzy, his mother. Michelle Williams is luminous - the bohemian arty type, the perfect foil to Bert's scientific mind. There is reason there is an Oscar buzz around Williams portrayal of this complex woman. She's outstanding. Rounding off the well-known actors, is Seth Rogan, who plays Benny, Burt's best friend. He's perfect in this role.
This is not only a homage to Spielberg's family, and from a quick google search, there are a lot of one for one similarities from Spielberg's life, but it's a love song to the late fifties and sixties. The Fablemans, being Jewish, appear a little out of place in Middle America. The anti-semitism Sam endures in high school is obnoxios, but his talent behind the camera comes through.
Another nice touch was Spielberg's short introduction at the start of the film, thanking the audience for coming out and witnessing this on the big screen. This probable doesn't need to be seen on the big screen, like the new Avatar movie, but it's good to be there to share in Spielberg's passion.
I loved this. I hope you do too. Watch out for it at the Oscars, it should do very well.
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