A powerful caveat to start – Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
With that out of the way.
There is an expression that you should suffer for your art. I am not sure we should suffer experiencing said art.
The Fablemans (dir Spielberg) is a quasi-autobiographical story of Spielberg’s youth where the young Sammy Fabelman first experiences the power of cinema after his parents took him to see Cecil B. Demile’s The Greatest Show on Earth.
A story generally sees someone wanting something but having a hard time getting in. In this film, Fableman immediately gets access to a camera, people to support him, and time to make movies. His father, Burt Fableman (Paul Dano) doesn’t endorse Sammy’s “hobby” but also is proud and encouraging. He does, however, hope that Sammy will get back to better subjects like math and science.
The difficulty doesn’t come from being a director, but more from being a child growing up in a complicated and messy world. Sammy’s mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) is an artist whose dreams have been stifled by Burt’s professional ambitions. He also happens to be a genius engineer.
Burt’s promotions take the family all around the US and each departure creates new challenges. Burt’s best friend and colleague Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogan) accompany the family for most of the journey but eventually gets left behind in Burt’s wake.
There are themes of art vs business, or passion vs family; doing what you love and makes you feel alive. Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsh) drives this point home. It is the essential conundrum in the film industry, balancing the artistic side with the business side. Which one wins?
Spielberg has made some amazing coming-of-age films like E.T the Extra-Terrestrial and wrote the story for The Goonies but this film didn’t reach those levels, there were some fun moments, some funny scenes, some great actors doing great work but it didn’t come together.
This film didn’t capture me, all of the struggles felt trivial, I noticed how uncomfortable the seat was (a terrible sign for me), and I was hoping it would end about 15 minutes before it did. The person I watched it with loved it, you may too so all I can say is Caveat Emptor (buyer beware).
20 December 2022 Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe