TIFF 2022 | MOVIE REVIEW: Spielberg Takes Us to Sunday Morning Cinema Gospel with "The Fabelmans"

12/12 ForReel Score | 5/5 Stars

Earlier this year, I compiled a list of films that I labeled as “Indulgent, Reflexive Masterpieces.” I included on this list—amongst other films—challenging, oneiric works such as David Lynch’s Inland Empire, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. These films vary significantly in tone and intent, of course, but I feel them to be kindred in the way they celebrate and ponder the filmmaking/artistic process, what it means to be an auteur, and memory as the essential film element, as well as how each these tenets inform each other.

Naturally, many efforts that have at one time or another been referred to as “love letters to cinema” ended up being included on my list as well. While considerably more upbeat than the other inclusions on my list, the inherent “metaness” of these films—for example, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Hugo, and Cinema Paradiso—means they fit the tags of “indulgent” and “reflexive” absolutely.

Upon watching Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans at the 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival (at the film’s world premier, I must qualify), I found myself again considering my list. Spielberg’s latest and 34th total film, The Fabelmans—also Spielberg’s most personal and arguably most playful film to date—is perhaps the most indulgent and reflexive of the films I have name dropped thus far. But let me clarify: I say this in praise. The Fabelmans is indulgent in all of the best ways—overflowing with rose-tinted recreations of the director’s most treasured memories—and smartly reflexive to an appropriate degree, still accessible and resplendent with universal appeal. It is Speilberg’s “love letter to cinema”—but before you point out how tired that phrase is, remember: this is a letter from the maestro himself.

Because it is from the maestro, it begins like a symphony, with sonata form, Spielberg in a lively and almost fairytale-like manner recounting for us his first encounter with the film medium. We are introduced to Spielberg’s avatar, the wide-eyed Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryna Francis-Deford and, later, Gabriel LaBelle), along with his spritely mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), and his straight-laced father, Burt (Paul Dano), who together attend a January 1952 screening of The Greatest Show on Earth, thus embedding in Sammy an instant zealousness for the moving image. But the particular scene that first enraptures tiny Spielberg is telling: a train colliding head-on with a car. Unbeknownst to the Sammy of 1952, his parents are on their own collision course with certain destruction, and the sudden impact this will have on Sammy and his sisters will wallop with the force of a freight train.

Ever synonymous with a style that combines elaborate, big-budget superspectacle with pointed emotional impact, Spielberg finds himself at the ultimate nexus point in his career with The Fabelmans. As far back as 2002, the titan of his craft was reported as being nervous about the prospect of telling his family’s story, but thanks to gentle nudging from frequent screenwriting collaborator, Tony Kushner, the script for The Fabelmans began to take shape during the lockdowns of 2020, Spielberg having found the impetus to finally rend his heart for a personal project. During the premier’s post-screening Q&A, Spielberg also said that his having finally achieved his autobiography was his way of “bringing back his parents,” both of whom passed within the last six years. Williams’ Mitzi and Dano’s Burt both figure largely into Sammy’s story—Mitzi often taking central focus as the family curio—and Spielberg’s love for them is writ large upon the screen. At the same time, The Fabelmans is not a film that blatantly glazes over tension and conflict. In an early, statement-making scene, petty squabbles within an Arizona family home are interrupted by the discovery of raging tornado, leading Mitzi, in a state of mania, to drive her three young children right towards the towering wind funnel for a closer look.

It was at this moment that I realized The Fabelmans would not go the sole route of ego stroking and fluff, nor would its focus be limited only to the halcyon days. The dissolution of Spielberg’s parents’ marriage has played a large part in influencing the director’s oeuvre, the emotional fallout pronouncing itself prominently in the story of Elliott and his single mother in E.T., but, in The Fabelmans, Spielberg confronts his family’s turbulent history head-on, opens up old wounds and lets flow all the confusion and despair he has kept welled up. Dano and Williams bring both pathos and gravitas to their roles, but extra praise must be heaped upon Williams, who takes a character that initially feels like a Lucy Ricardo impersonation and finds in her deep chasms of conflict and insecurity. It should also be said that Seth Rogen—here cast as Benny, Burt’s good friend and object of Mitzi’s wandering affections—more than rises to the occasion, wholeheartedly investing in his character’s gregarious charm. Had he handled his role differently, the emotional throughline of the film may have fallen apart. (I would also be remiss if I did not mention Julia Butters and Keeley Karsten, whose performances as Sammy’s younger sisters elicited from me the more tears than I knew I was capable of crying.)  

But all of this isn’t to say that The Fabelmans is a dour picture; most of the film is as jubilant, invigorating, and unapologetically sentiment-driven as any of Spielberg’s works. This it owes to its episodic structuring, which allows Spielberg to channel surf briskly through lovingly sketched moments of childhood exuberance, familial bliss, and the occasional goofball vignette, peppering in minute details from his own memory as well as homages to his past filmography. Our compass through it all is newcomer (and Vancouver-born) LaBelle as tiny film chad Spielberg himself, who deftly navigates the peaks and valleys of his real life counterpart’s nostalgia-steeped recreations, nimbly switching from passionate moments of teen angst to scenes featuring outpourings of boyhood giddiness. The Fabelmans sports the “coming-of-age” label proudly, and it is all the more enrapturing with a commanding lead navigating the many formative moments.

When the moments are as romanticized as they are, one can see how parts of Spielberg’s film will earn detractors in audiences who favour more dialed-back approaches, but for those who embrace Spielbergian melodrama and showmanship, it is hard to look at this film and find a missed beat. The Fabelmans is a work from a director synonymous with the word cinema itself, so are we surprised when we see that every scene is expertly crafted and lavished upon with expressive lighting, performances that have a theatre-like energy, and highly polished mise-en-scène? Longstanding Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kamiński finds the magic in even the film’s more mundane moments, while John Williams transports us in the way only John Williams knows how. These are juggernauts in the business and they will have you nodding your head consistently throughout this film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime. The big goofy grin you’ll be wearing on your face throughout the runtime, that is pure Spielberg. Scene after scene of this film hits every big emotional beat that you want from a heart-on-its-sleeve, Hollywood production.

Ultimately, this maximalist approach in The Fabelmans works to service the smallest, most personal truths, which themselves can turn around and have train wreck-sized outcomes. Spielberg’s parents’ divorce must have felt to him a cataclysm of Earth-shattering proportions, so it is only fitting that his filmic rendering of their story should be a product of both fine and broad strokes. Of both unconditional love and heartbreaking, hard truth honesty. The artist known as Spielberg was born from this story, the Spielberg that mastered the technique of broadening or narrowing the scope of one’s story in order to better serve sentiment and spectacle; the director that made his name striking the perfect balance in between. To see him return to his personal coming-of-age story, at 75 years of age—delivering a high watermark of his career, of the year 2022 (and maybe of film in general??)—is nothing short of a revelation. The Fabelmans is more than brilliantly indulgent and resonantly reflexive; it is the perfect, most earnest (and most entertaining) balance in between. This is what every story about family should be.