The Fabelmans (dir. Steven Spielberg, 2022) — Review

Read The Fablemans screenplay PDF here. For personal, private and educational use only.

It’s a tale as old as time, spun by many a Midwestern dad over the grill: middle-class American kid gets the movie bug, entangling their hopes and dreams with all sort of artistic aspirations that ultimately must contend with adult life. In the case of The Fabelmans, though, that kid is Steven Spielberg, and we all know the story will end rather differently to most.

The story unfolds in the '50s and '60s, following the trials and tribulations of budding filmmaker Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) and his sprawling family network. Grappling with the chaos of his domestic life via a film camera given to him by his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), young Sammy inadvertently captures a tryst between his mother and his father's best friend Benny (Seth Rogen, seen here in rare dramatic register). This devastating revelation fuels Sammy's neurotic rage, particularly toward his father, who bears the brunt of Sammy's Oedipal resentment for the collapse of the family unit; it also sets up the path for his development as both an American and a filmmaker.

It could be a heavy-handed work of family mythologizing, but in Spielberg’s hands The Fabelmans feels more like a museum piece than a dull holiday album. Grifting patriarch Burt Fabelman is both an everyman and a Jewish and American archetype, the family-minded electrical engineer who drags his family from New Jersey to Arizona, then to Northern California in pursuit of his trade. Yet with each new home, the family fissures widen, and Sammy's relationship with his father becomes increasingly strained. With the unique benefits of hindsight and the clout of an all-time great director, Spielberg can look back on both his father’s faults — not just cuckoldry, but misunderstand ing his son's passion for filmmaking — with a forgiving, ‘he did the best he could’ perspective. Young Sammy truly has the last word, but he uses it with kindness.

Unlike the men of the story, Mitzi emerges as a narcissistic, flawed matriarch who gave up her dreams of being a concert pianist for motherhood and resents every second of it. "You don't owe anyone your life," she snaps at her son, displaying her profound disillusionment. Mitzi’s sense of domestic imprisonment blurs the line between eccentricity and flaming metal illness, rolling together the two great stereotypes of the cracked-up artist and cracked-up housewife. Great-Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) is another aesthetic wild card in the Fabelman family, hectoring his nephew to pursue his artistic passions at any cost. "Family, art," he bellows. "It will tear your heart out!" Truthful as he may be to Spielberg’s own experiences, Boris doesn’t translate quite so well to a modern filmgoing audience, embodying a number of ‘Old World’ stereotypes that don’t land with the intended sincerity.

Amidst all this, Sammy endures open expressions of anti-Semitism at his predominantly WASPish high school. Yet Spielberg injects a dose of his characteristic optimism into the film, as the most anti-Semitic student experiences a change of heart after seeing himself in a heroic light through Sammy's filmmaking talents. The story ends on a note of affirmation, and the filmmaker indulges in a bit of hagiography. We all know who Sammy grows up to be, and so does Spielberg.

For all its Jewish characters and themes, The Fabelmans falls short of offering a new understanding of the generation it depicts, particularly given the hordes of non-Jewish actors in key roles such as the parents. Despite its good intentions, the particularity of Spielberg’s vision ultimately renders it rather generic, if soulful.