While writing this blog often brings me joy, there are times when my life sort of prevents me from being able to focus on it. Usually, when this happens, I try to write multiple posts that strike my fancy and then bounce around between them until something clicks and then I post it.
Other times, I will write multiple posts in the span of a few weeks if I have a hot streak going. In the past, that happened when I did my "Best of the Decades" film series, for example.
Then you have cases where I really do sincerely want to post content, especially when it comes to movie reviews this time of year, but very few films give me any kind of desire to write about them.
I watched The Fablemans on the day after Christmas, and I tried for about a period of 3 days to write a review only to finally delete everything I wrote around New Years.
I originally decided I would just not post anything about it, but apparently, I changed my mind since you are reading this right now.
Being at a loss for words in how to convey how you feel could be an immensely positive thing, but I think the unfortunate news here is that I am more at a loss for words because I feel like I don't really have much that I feel compelled to say about The Fabelmans.
When it comes to a director like Spielberg, he made his mark by making big blockbuster films that would excite kids and adults alike...such as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park.
However, starting in the 80s, he did try to delve into more serious fare but with much more erratic results. I still think he was the absolutely wrong choice of filmmaker to bring The Color Purple to the screen even though that film still has passionate supporters.
He did do very well with movies like Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan, and especially Schindler's List, but at their core, I often find that there is just a sugary polish to his films.
Spielberg can make movies, but aside from a couple of efforts, I have never found any of his work to be overly daring or risky or that deep. This is especially true when you put him next to other filmmakers who came up in the New Hollywood Renaissance of the 1970s like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, or even a more erratic director like Brian de Palma (because a movie like Blow Out alone deserves some praise sent his way).
Spielberg has gotten some flack in recent years...and I kind of understand why...for having a rather narrow-minded mentality about filmmaking. In theory, his idea of wanting to save movie theaters at the expense of streaming services is incredibly valid because I think any real film lover would want to keep movie theaters alive.
My major problem with how he has presented himself is his openness at tearing down films that have agreed to be streamed on a platform as opposed to opening only in theaters for a few months. Spielberg said in an interview that he voted for Green Book as Best Picture because he simply didn't want Roma to win as it was streaming on Netflix.
I do want to state that I have no affinity to Roma. I actually found it to be rather boring aside from a few particular moments...BUT I also respected what Alfonso Cuarón was doing as it was a deeply personal film to him and the final results were a very well-made film.
If anything, I think The Favourite was the only film amongst those nominees that even deserved to be nominated so it should've been the winner rather handily.
It seems rather fitting that the man who is railing against new conventions would end up voting for a film that was so flaccid and old-fashioned and treacly in its approach to a racism story.
Since COVID, Spielberg has released West Side Story and The Fabelmans.
Despite movies like Dune and Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water making huge Box Office numbers (with Dune managing to do it even while streaming on HBOMax), Spielberg's two films managed to bomb.
In the case of The Fabelmans, it is the worst performing film of his career. Even a movie like Always performed better, so that is a rather sobering thought.
There truly is a problem with the movie world at the moment...and I think COVID truly aided to a bigger disconnect than what was happening before.
So often, a lot of these awards movies don't play in Middle America, nor do they get a lot of promotion. I feel like unless you are actively looking for these films, no one is really going to know about them.
Even last awards season, I recall multiple times posting about the Oscars and having friends say, "I haven't even heard of most of these films". The question here is how well has a movie like The Fabelmans been promoted or is it simply that is a story that no one cares to watch despite the fact it is essentially the story of Spielberg's burgeoning interest in becoming a filmmaker?
I don't think The Fabelmans is a bad movie.
Far from it.
However, it isn't a great movie, either. It also isn't a very good movie.
I would say it is good and solid, with some elements that are interesting.
Movies about children growing up surrounded by their families are all over the place in film history, like Amarcord, Hope & Glory, Radio Days, Yi Yi, and even more recently Belfast.
Or you have a movie like Cinema Paradiso, which tells the story of a young Italian boy who develops a passion for film when he meets an older man who works a theater projectionist.
There are elements from all of these films that come into play with The Fabelmans so despite some elements that maybe felt a little unique, I didn't consider the movie to feel that fresh.
I already knew a little bit about Spielberg's life as a kid based on previous interviews and articles, but even elements I didn't know, I somehow saw them coming a mile away.
Spielberg's counterpart in the movie is Sammy Fabelman, and when the movie begins, his parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) are taking him to see Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, the 1952 winner of Best Picture...and already I cringe as that film is easily one of the worst to ever win the top prize.
The film's big epic train crash leaves young Sammy stunned, and he asks for a train set for Hanukkah. Not long after, he tries to create the train crash which upsets Burt while Mitzi gets what he wanted to do and has him stage the crash one more time so he can film it on her Brownie camera.
This sets up the stage of Mitzi being the artsy and free-spirited mother while Burt is the more stoic figure who lives a life by rigid rules and an interest in science.
Spielberg had wanted to make this movie for years and actually worked on a script with his sister Anne back in 1999 following his work on Saving Private Ryan. Despite his interest, he knew that he couldn't make this film while his parents were still alive.
So, following the passing of his mother Leah in 2017 and his father Arnold in 2020, Spielberg approached Tony Kushner, with whom he worked with on multiple projects, and asked if he would help dust off the script and rewrite it with him.
The reason for the concern was Spielberg's mother developed romantic feelings for her husband's colleague and eventually they divorced, and she married him.
Young Spielberg actually picked up on this and briefly hated his mother for betraying his father.
The really bizarre thing about this film is how it made me constantly question how I felt about these parental figures. I certainly don't judge them from the standpoint of simply falling out of love as that is something that is far more accepting these days; Even my own parents got divorced over a decade ago.
There is an energy surrounding Dano and Williams that felt a bit erratic and I never really sure I cared much about their battles or even how it affected the family. I also think there is a particularly lesser focus on Dano as Burt that keeps him at arm's length...and perhaps that was intentional on Spielberg's part considering how his father viewed his ambitions at that time. I just don't think Dano was able to overcome this and was left with an uncompelling character.
Michelle Williams, on the other hand, comes across as more vibrant but also suffers from emotional blowups that read as too brash for the screen and a fight, she has with teenage Sammy comes across as sloppily acted, staged, and edited.
I feel like Michelle Williams is one of those actresses who seems to be either really loved or really hated...and a lot of that stems back to her love of emoting. She's very bold though in her choices. I can recall seeing her onstage in the play Blackbird opposite Jeff Daniels and you could tell she really dug deep into that character's (a victim of sexual assault as a child) neuroses.
Here, I think she does teeter on the brink of being a bit much at time, but honestly, for the majority of the film, she gave us some truly nice moments.
I think young Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Sammy as a teenager through young adulthood, manages to give the film enough of the heart and charm it needs to succeed in anyway. I can see why Spielberg was drawn to him, and I think he has the potential to become a bigger star.
I do want to single out two more things really quickly.
First up is Judd Hirsch. Mostly known for his role on the TV series Taxi and his very wonderful turn as Dr. Berger in Ordinary People, Hirsch plays an irascible Great Uncle to Sammy who shows up in the film nearly an hour into it, bellows about the horrors of working in the film industry (which he had in the silent era), and then leaves after 10 minutes.
There has been talk of him being an outside possibility of an Oscar nomination. Not sure if I would go that far, but this is one of those performances that show what a truly great actor can do in just a few moments of screentime.
The other thing is David Lynch.
It has been said that Kushner's husband Mark Harris made the suggestion that David Lynch should play legendary director John Ford, the filmmaker that was the biggest inspiration to Spielberg and who would be the driving force of the film's big final scene.
Lynch is one of the few directors these days that is truly a personality. You could argue that some like Tarantino or Spike Lee fit this bill, but Lynch is someone who is so uniquely him that he is about as iconic as Alfred Hitchcock.
Lynch has made cameos as an actor over the years, most famously as Gordon Cole on his own Twin Peaks or as network production exec Jack Dall on Louie, but there was always that sense that Lynch was essentially playing himself.
Ford was a truly irascible figure too and rather rough around the edges. Despite Lynch being known for being a rather warm and inviting...though quirky...figure that isn't as harsh as some of his films might suggest, he does seem like and proved to be the right choice to play Ford here.
He partakes of advice on how to properly film a horizon and then bellows for Sammy to "get the fuck out of my office".
And Sammy leaves on cloud nine and walks out of the studio...complete with Spielberg breaking the fourth wall by going against Ford's proclamation by filming the horizon his own way...and then changing his mind and filming it like Ford suggested.
Great artists steal, as they say.
I feel like I am a little harsh on Spielberg, but I have to be in the right mindset to truly appreciate him. I will never consider him to be on par with directors like Kubrick or Bergman or Scorsese or Varda or Akerman, but he does show a certain flair for film.
I still think a movie like Jaws, which truly put him on the map, shows he can make a truly great exciting film that also has truly interesting character types.
I just don't think he always quite gets to that kind of level anymore...and despite some of its charm, I think The Fabelmans falls short.
RATING: ***1/2 out *****
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