The Fabelmans - A Review
Many films have explored the beguiling effect film has on children. Who doesn’t remember with fondness their very first childhood trip to the cinema and the emotions they experienced watching a film for the first time on a big screen. When young Sammy Fableman is told off by his parents early on in The Fablemans for wrecking an expensive model railway set, his attentive mother realises her son’s recent first visit to the cinema to watch Cecil B De Mille’s The Greatest Show On Earth (1952) has affected him in more ways than she and her husband could have ever imagined. Her son’s destructiveness hasn’t come about through carelessness or a childhood tantrum, but because he wishes to recreate the images from the film that so beguiled him; to control and manipulate a chain of events to construct a memorable visual story.
Does cinema have the power to influence and enchant young minds more so than old ones? The Fablemans suggests that it does whilst still acknowledging its ability to relieve the mundane and traumatic elements of lives of people of all ages. This is possible not only through the experience of watching but also especially through the medium of creating. From the very first moment Sammy’s obsession with cinema will accompany him throughout his entire adolescence, and the gift of his very first camera begins his first foray into making films for himself. The innocence of his childhood and early memories he lovingly captures and edits – turning his experiences into films for his family to enjoy. His friends are enlisted to recreate memorable scenes from Westerns he has recently seen, and later on, as the only Jewish child in his high school, Sammy uses his skills as a filmmaker to lessen the effects of bullying and isolation he feels from those around him. It is his ultimate comfort, his passion and his lifeline.
When footage he has taken of his family helps him realise and come to terms with a troubling secret concerning his family, Sammy relies on film to express his emotions. He is not incapable of expressing how he feels but at the same time knows that cinema can reveal truth and feeling in a way that ordinary human interaction cannot. He therefore chooses to reveal his knowledge of the secret to his mother by showing her the footage he has filmed in which it is revealed rather than directly confronting her and potentially losing control of his emotions. After all, according to Jean Luc Goddard, cinema is merely the truth twenty four times per second.
Although very much a film about film, The Fabelmans is also an exploration of an American nuclear family. Although a happy and stable environment is provided for Sammy’s creativity to flourish, the film shows even the most apparently trouble-free families aren’t always what they seem. Sammy’s father is a gentle and unassuming individual, a successful electrical engineer that is constantly having to uproot his family for employment purposes, something which inevitably takes its toll on the family’s cohesion.
He is quietly encouraging of his son’s “hobby” but would rather he give up filmmaking altogether and focus on a more practical career. This is a contrast to Sammy’s similarly kind but neurotic mother who is more creative and encourages her son to pursue his artistic ambitions. As this seemingly perfect family begins to fragment, Sammy uses film as an escape from reality and as a method of dealing with his emotions. It soothes and comforts him, providing much needed relief from his homelife which becomes more difficult with the onset of teen angst. At the final year prom his work documenting his school year’s trip to the beach turns him into a hero amongst his contemporaries. It is his way of making sense of understanding and making sense of a world that, as the love between his mother and father breaks down, becomes more difficult to decipher.
Spielberg directed The Fablemans with the intention of creating an ode to the medium to which his life has been dedicated. Many of the scenes take place exactly as Spielberg is said to remember them, including his memorable encounter with master filmmaker John Ford at the film’s conclusion. Home movie footage is recreated just as the young Spielberg shot the original films. Recreating shot selections he made as a child must have been quite a painstaking and laborious process but such is the dedication of the director who is arguably one of the most significant people to ever be associated with the cinema. Most people have many fond memories of their own associated with his varied and extensive back catalogue.
There are wonderfully memorable shots that capture the beguiling affect cinema has on a young Sammy, including an iconic scene where, lacking the proper facilities to project his first film, he is utterly captivated by the images he has captured which he watches using the palm of his hands as a rudimentary projector. There is just enough light to luminate Sammy’s face in a way that frames perfectly a child utterly captivated by what he is seeing unfold. Not since the Italian director Guiseppe Torrantore achieved a similar feat in Cinema Paradiso (1988) has a film so beautifully captured a child’s obsession with cinema. Torrantore’s film won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film and The Fabelmans has everything to ensure similar success is inevitable. It will be remembered as one of Spiellberg’s most charming and memorable films.