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Steven Spielberg: "The Fabelmans"

 I was really touched by "The Fabelmans," a big-budget movie about a family.


How strange to see people talking to their children on a big screen. So many Hollywood films now seem to be about male colleagues joining forces to defeat Ultron; it's radical to get stars together in one house, and radical to write dialogue about Hanukkah presents, kosher kitchens, rubber spiders underneath the dinnerware. (Tony Kushner is, as always, on a wavelength that the rest of us can't approach.)

Kushner collaborated with Steven Spielberg to write what seems to be a love letter to Spielberg's mother. Since the movie is Spielberg's work of autobiography, its subplot is all about the nature of movie-making; a story about storytelling inevitably has a "meta" quality. So--for example--when a girl says to the little boy Sammy Fabelman, "You never make movies about women," Spielberg is of course winking at us. He is saying, "I hear what you say about my work." Also, Spielberg is enjoying a bit of irony; "The Fabelmans" is, in a major way, a film about a woman. It's a film that might win an Oscar for Michelle Williams.

The Williams character--Mrs. Fabelman--loves her husband but dreams of another life. She would like to be a concert pianist, and she would like to run off with Seth Rogen. Mrs. Fabelman's Divided Self is a wondrous thing to behold; you feel Michelle Williams's pain in every scene. Also, the movie is bold in looking at mental illness, and at the way certain things might have been ignored, unevaluated, during a so-called "sunny" time in American history. Mrs. Fabelman chases after a tornado, and she brings a monkey into the house. In the world of the film, this is viewed as a charming display of eccentricity--but a 2022 ticket-buyer sees someone in severe pain (and also sees how the pain is repeatedly just swept under a rug).

A fascinating part of "The Fabelmans" is Kushner's observation about art. Kushner shows how a camera can sometimes capture what we want to ignore; Sammy Fabelman's home movie exposes Mrs. Fabelman's act of emotional adultery, a thing that was hiding in plain sight. At the same time, a camera can distort reality. Sammy Fabelman creates a myth while filming a high-school beach party; through editing, he creates characters who aren't actually his real classmates. A frenemy approaches and says, "That's not really who I am. You're telling a lie."

The movie ends with a perfect joke--an observation John Ford makes about filming the horizon. Spielberg's camera disobeys Ford's command--then the camera corrects itself. The horizon shifts--in a deliberately jarring way. And so--literally--the camera makes the last observation in the film. The characters aren't speaking; the camera is having its say.

There is more to write about this movie, and about Williams. I hope MW does well on Oscar night.
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