The Fabelmans

Magical Egotism is the current vogue in American non-franchise moviedom. Leading practitioners are David O. Russell, Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach....and now the old hit-maker Steven Spielberg proves himself a master of the genre. This blancmange of a film is redeemed in part by Michelle Williams' remarkable performance and an all-too-brief one by Judd Hirsch. Otherwise, it's tooth-rot. Spielberg's great talent is for genre movies, so he should be on firm ground here. But the sad fact is that any time he touches anything even remotely serious, there is a whiff of fakery that, in some of his work, becomes a stench. It's some irony that in this movie, his alter-ego Sam Fableman assesses his early attempt at an 8mm adventure as 'Fake!'. That is THE FABLEMANS.

A long session on the therapy couch with Steven. How did it turn out so badly? How did this man with so much potential whose career never took flight beyond a few Super 8 shorts end up with so many failed dreams and crushed hopes? The Fabelmans gives you some idea, depicting a horrendous childhood upbringing where we see a boy raised by a nightmarish father given to abominable acts like quitely working on engineering projects and offering supportive advice, and a mother who played beautiful piano and adopted a pet monkey. How Steven even made it out alive is a wonder. Watch this, and weep. Ouch.

This semi-autobiographical film centres around Sammy Fabelman who is transfixed by the first movie he sees at age 6 and develops a passion for film making. Other themes explored with variable depth and success include the fracturing marriage of his parents, bullying and anti-semitism at high school, young love and coming of age, and selfishness in general. The movie is way too long and felt a little boring in the first 45minutes. It's nicely shot and well directed as you would expect, but the script is patchy and while the acting is generally excellent, the performances of Paul Dano and in particular Michelle Williams as Sammy's parents felt too affected and a little contrived - at times I felt I was watching filming on the set of a TV sitcom. I wonder still if this was deliberately instructed by Spielberg, but for me it doesn't work. Gabriel Labelle is the best as the teenage Sammy and Judd Hirsch is superb in a cameo as Uncle Boris. John Williams as always provides a perfect score and the visuals are superb. Overall it's worth seeing for a little insight into Spielberg's childhood but there is an unsatisfactory feel to the film as a whole. I think it could have been so much better.

I have been interested in this film since the moment I heard about it. As a kid whose first memorable movie theater experience was E. T., no filmmaker has more influenced the way I experience movies than Spielberg...and nothing influenced those movies more than his parents' divorce. So I was 100% ready for a personal tale, an origin story without capes or superpowers. No CGI. No motion capture. Just a movie about the power of families and stories through the eyes of a kid. It is just that... But it is more too. There's a generosity in the way that Spielberg makes sense of his own story after the fact. Nobody is a villain or hero. They are just people choosing between happiness and responsibility while realizing slowly and painfully that it may not have to be either/or. There were scenes that worked better than others (and I am still sorting through the third act), but it was fun to see him tell a story like this, whether it was his own or not.