Film Review: The Fabelmans

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Objectionable

Steven Spielberg is the greatest movie director of all time.

Let it be known on this blog that this is a hill I am willing to die on.  You need only look at his catalogue of films to confirm this: Jaws, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Lincoln.  If any director had made ONE of those movies, they would be deserving of remembrance, but Spielberg made them all.

As we are getting into what will clearly be known as the "Late Spielberg Period," he has become very reflective on the past and on legacy.  With that in mind, he set his sights on an autobiographical film that is layered with just enough fiction to give him license to make things up.  

Thus we have Spielberg's latest film: The Fabelmans.

And what a disappointment it is.

Have you ever been over a friend's house and had them play home movies for you?  And then after a few moments, did you realize that you found the videos so much less interesting than your friend?  That is part of the experience of watching The Fabelmans.

The Fabelmans follows young Sammy Fabelman (played as a child by Mateo Zoryan and as a teen by Gabriel LaBelle).  He grows up in the 1950's and '60's with three sisters in a house run by his kind, but technically-minded father Burt (Paul Dano) and his emotionally unstable and artistic mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams).  Along with them is Burt's friend and co-worker "Uncle" Bennie (Seth Rogan).  As a boy Sammy is brought to see the movie The Greatest Show on Earth.  With that, the germ of filmmaking infects him and it never lets go.  He feels the pull of this artistic calling, even when it pulls him away from his family while it starts to implode.  In one of the movie's best scenes, his Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) explains how the artistic calling can utterly destroy a person's family life and be torn apart.

The movie suffers from the fatal flaw of most biopics: a person's life doesn't neatly fit into a three-act structure.  We get these vignettes into Spielberg's life, but they act much more effectively at creating a feel for his childhood than the story of his childhood.  That would be fine, but Spielberg is a master storyteller who is failing at telling a good story.  

I would say the most fatal thing that has happened to Spielberg's storytelling is the influence of co-writer Tony Kushner.  While their collaboration worked amazingly well on Lincoln, Kushner's cynical world-view has had a corrosive effect on the director.  Munich has some horrible moral relativism, West Side Story tarnishes itself with modern deconstructionism, and The Fabelmans is filled with an overwhelming sense of narcisism.  

Spielberg is the director of wonder.  Wonder and narcisism mix like oil and water.

The place where wonder is most present is in the beginning as Sammy discovers movies.  But as he grows older, he turns from looking outward to looking inward.  There are some insightful moments about living with artistic vision.  There is a moment when Sammy's family is going through a crisis.  As he watches, Sammy sees a reflection of himself in the mirror filming the entire event.  I think this beautifully captures the problem that many artists have: they not only live life, but they observe life through an artistic lens.

I was also horribly shocked by how anti-Christian the movie was.  If you look back on Spielberg's canon he is incredibly respectful of religious faith, both Jewish and Christian. But this movie was awful in that regard.  In the last third of the movie, Sammy meets a Catholic girl (I say Catholic based on the imagery in her home)  named Monica (Chloe East).  She takes Sammy to her bedroom where she has pictures of Jesus on a wall along with other pin-up celebrity boys.  It reminded me of an article I read years ago in Entertainment Weekly which compared Christian images in the home to immature teens hanging posters of their idols.  Anyway, Monica talks about how Jesus is "sexy" and then pulls Sammy to the floor to "pray."  What was horrid about this moment was that it was clearly equating evangelization with seduction.  It goes all the way to Monica dragging Sammy onto her bed as they begin making out with a gigantic crucifix staring down at them.

In the past I made excuses for Spielberg by blaming Kushner.  But the scene is not just written in an anti-Christian way, it is filmed in that way as well.  Christ is reduced to a school-girl crush or he is an ogre staring down in judgment.  I found this scene and all subsequent scenes involving Monica off-putting.  In fact, everyone at Sammy's high school is obnoxious.  The film portrays Sammy as an outsider because he is Jewish and has to face anti-Semitism.  

Towards the end of the film, Sammy makes a film about the senior "cut day" that delights his classmates who cheer him on.  However, the movie makes clear that his classmates are horrid.  Watching the movie does not make them better people.  They are idiots who start to like Sammy because they enjoy dumb shows and noise.  I was horribly turned off by this, because it implies that this is how Spielberg sees us.  Spielberg has always been a crowd-pleasing storyteller.  For years, he delighted us with his movie magic.  It felt like he knew us and made a connection to us.  If the portrayal of Sammy is meant to be a stand-in for Spielberg, then he sees us with disdain.  To him we are the wretched masses who only care about dumb shows and noise and not about real art.

The center of the story is about Sammy's parents.  Dano is fantastic as Burt.  He embodies that quiet stoicism of men in his day.  He makes every effort to keep things even for his family even as his wife starts going off the deep end.  Williams does a good job as Mitzi.  It is a difficult part to play with any sympathy, but she is able to draw out her humanity.  Even Rogen turns in a decent dramatic turn.  Hirsch's limited screen time should not take away from how charismatic he is on the screen and how brings the movie to life.

LaBelle does a decent job.  The problem is that the script doesn't really help him.  He has deeply emotional moments, but his character beats don't make any sense.  In one scene he hates his mother.  In the next he is sympathetic.  And then later he hates her again with no real sense of purpose as to why.  Also, Sammy doesn't really have a character arc.  The story is about how he becomes a filmmaker, not how he becomes a man.  When the movie comes to an end, he is still the neurotic, self-centered artist we see at the beginning, only now he is at the beginning of a successful career.  That might be accurate, but it isn't fulfilling to watch.

Thematically, the movie also fails.  Towards the end, Mitzi says to Sammy: "You don't owe anyone your life."  What a horrible world-view!  What value does your life have if you don't owe it to something larger than you?  If you are the end-all, be-all of your life, then you have set yourself up as an idol to worship.  This theme perfectly embodies the narcisism throughout.

This film is such a missed opportunity.  We get small moments of insight and inspiration, but it is buried beneath the empty naval-gazing.

The Fabelemans reminds us that often times even the artist does not fully understand his own art.