Trailer Time: The Fablemans

There is something wonderous and magical about this trailer.  The Fablemans is clearly a fictionalized autobiography of director Steven Spielberg.  The imagery, the tone, the sense of awe at the art of film are all over Spielberg's movie.

However watching it, I became overwhelmed with sadness at a terrible thought:

Steven Spielberg doesn't think he is going to live much longer.

Maybe I am wrong.  But I've noticed the tragectory of his last few movies.  Ready Player One tells the story of what happens when the creator of a pop culture phenomenon dies and the legacy he leaves behind.  As I wrote in my review: "Haliday is Spielberg.  Spielberg helped create the popular culture we all live in.  He was a kid who dreamed of becoming the greatest filmmaker in history, which he has.  Movies are expensive and this is understandable.  But in many ways he has become a corporation.  And in that there is a loss of that innocent artistic purity.  The same thing is seen in Haliday, who knows that something has been lost along the way and hopes that the next generation will set right what he did wrong.  Both Haliday and Spielberg want to draw you in to a fantasy world in order to enrich life in the real world.  But how many of us get stuck in fantasy.  The movie asks the question whether or not our interactions with games and art are making life in the real world better or worse."

Then he made West Side Story.  There, Spielberg is revisiting one of the classic films of his youth where he tried to match his storytelling skills to that of the masters who came before.  This was a new challenge to him as a musical and I can see it as one of his potential "bucket list" items.

And now we are here at The Fabelmans.  Spielberg as returned to where it all began.  He is going to show us how the movies cast a spell on him and how this art shaped him in the same way that he ended up shaping the art.  This movie feels like a man who is looking back on his life and taking stock of the journey to see what it all means.

Perhaps I am reading too much into this.  But Spielberg is 75-years-old.  If I were thinking about making my final film, I might also go back immortalize my family on the screen so that their story could be remembered in the years to come.

Thoughts?