The Fabelmans Review

Looking back on the influences of the past and forming those as a feature film is nothing new, it is the journey there that makes them unique though. From the highs of Cinema Paradiso and the lows of those features that believe a static placement in a period is enough to gloss over narrative conformities, film has frequently charged through influences and reflections from directors held in great revere. Steven Spielberg is nothing short of legendary as a figurehead for Hollywood, and it makes sense that his reflective ways throughout The Fabelmans are broadly enjoyable and elicit the same qualities his other movies do, or did, for those that had the chance to first engage them in the cinema.

That feeling is somewhat lost, now, especially when film is available on the small screen for those not wanting to drudge through sleet and snow to a cinema forty minutes away that only shows Marvel and blockbuster films. Honestly, The Fabelmans might get one or two showings in this fifty-mile radius, and that is a shame. For Spielberg to speak of the beauty of the big screen back in the day, of the elusive qualities of the lights going down on an audience who are illuminated by the joys of the big screen, are beautifully explained by Paul Dano’s performance here. There is a line between love letter and desire to showcase the dying elements of the movies, but it appears the old guard is keen to display their love and defence of the movie house as a place to be for entertainment.

Reflecting through the early years of his life, it appears Spielberg, the elderly statesman of cinema, has plenty to muse on. He rattles through a deeply biographical depiction of his early years and the influences that put him where he is. But The Fabelmans, naturally, go far beyond a primitive dictation of early years focus. There are influences drawn from the later years, reflecting well on how much courage and immediacy Spielberg had as a natural behind the camera. The Fabelmans does linger on that frequently, it is expected, but it does well to weave some human elements in there, the back and forth between Dano, Seth Rogen and Michelle Williams is electric. Gabriel LaBelle is a tremendous leading man, and the David Lynch cameo that ties everything together is divine.

A two-and-a-half-hour brag about seeing the glory days of films right there in the cinema. Spielberg gets a free pass to do so because his direction throughout is wonderful, his storytelling as intimate and perplexing as ever. The Fabelmans feels at the same time deeply personal yet fundamentally broad to include those that did not grow up and old in the days of cinematic defiance. Touching in all the right and surprising places, Spielberg marks his early days and eventual growth as one of the greats of Hollywood. His influences, inferences and reservations in those early years are marked not just by everyday life in the schooling system but by a real desire to fly the nest and take a risk. That is far more difficult now than it was back then, but The Fabelmans has no time for the future as it delicately presents itself to the past.