Steven Spielberg did not do his best work in the 2010s. Out of seven features, only Lincoln (2012) will likely be remembered as a classic. The rest are well-made but weary films that fail to inspire the wonder Spielberg has staked his career upon, a feeling that made him one of the most sought-after directors for more than three decades, beginning with his plus-sized blockbuster, Jaws (1975). However, Spielberg appears to have shaken out of this rut, one that saw four of his films from the last decade churning with a shoulder-shrugging mid-70% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes. Last year’s West Side Story felt vital and alive, supplanting Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 version as the essential cinematic adaptation of the musical and now, Spielberg returns less than a year later with The Fabelmans, a safe but effective semi-autobiographical retelling of his adolescence, an examination of just how he became a film director.
Even though many of his films do not deal explicitly with themes of Jewishness, Steven Spielberg is inherently a Jewish director. Sure, Schindler’s List (1993) and Munich (2005) focus on some of the darkest chapters of modern Jewish history, but a Jewish aesthetic bleeds into much of his other work as well, especially in his post-Schindler’s List output. It’s hard to nail down this sensibility, put it into words, but just look at how Spielberg’s characters talk or interact with the world and you will see that Jewish awareness creep in.
The Fabelmans, however, is Spielberg’s most explicitly Jewish work to date. Many of the best directors cite how cinema saved their lives. François Truffaut claims that he would have been a criminal if not for the cinema. Spielberg has equated the experience of going to the movies – the flickering light, the silence and awe of the audience – with the reverence associated with going to synagogue. The light of the cinema is a stand-in for the light of God. Or maybe to someone like Spielberg, it’s the same thing. And that is what The Fabelmans really explores: Sammy Fabelman, a young surrogate for Spielberg, learning to overcome his parents’ divorce, overcome antisemitism and allow the religious magic of making movies to wash over him.
So we see Jewishness in every detail in The Fabelmans, from Sammy’s family coming home to the only dark house in their neighborhood sans Christmas lights after a life-changing screening of DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth to the presence of challah on the dining room table. We see it in the cadence of dinnertime discussion and the dark, gallows humor inherent in Sammy’s mother. It’s a self-reflective move for Spielberg, as The Fabelmans deals with a character who sees his Jewishness as an impediment, especially in a time and place where being Jewish paints a target on one’s back. So, is the movie a coming to terms for the director? An embrace of his heritage? Maybe it is. “Unless I make a movie about it,” Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) tells one of his tormenters near the end of the film. “Which I’m never, ever going to do.” But here we are: Spielberg finally did make a movie about how growing up Jewish shaped him and his cinematic aesthetic.
Sammy’s personal drama isn’t the only narrative in The Fabelmans. Spielberg also chronicles the dissolving marriage of his parents over the span of a few years. His mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a former concert pianist who is now a housewife. She resents her place in life. Longs to be an actress; to perform. She is also resentful of her husband, Burt (Paul Dano), a schlubby computer engineer, who moves the family, including Sammy and his two sisters, from New Jersey to Arizona to California during the span of the film, following job opportunities. The free-willed Mitzi sees a spark in Sammy, a nascent love for filmmaking, and tries to kindle it. The more practical Burt views filmmaking as a hobby, nothing to stake a career on. This war between art and science is what propels The Fabelmans forward and sees Sammy wrestling with the direction of his life: talent versus the practical.
Complicating matters is Bennie (Seth Rogen), Burt and Mitzi’s best friend and Burt’s co-worker. He is almost like family. The kids even call him “Uncle Bennie” to the chagrin of Burt’s mother. When they move to Arizona, Bennie follows them out west. The presence of Bennie, however, complicates the already disintegrating marriage, a hard truth Sammy learns when making an innocent family movie following a camping trip. It’s Spielberg’s version of Blow-Up and we learn a hard truth as its revealed to Sammy. It’s a thrilling moment in a movie loaded with quiet, personal touches, one that sets Sammy on a collision course with adulthood.
Maybe it’s not the coming-of-age moment that a lesser film would present. Here, Sammy realizes that he has the power to manipulate the truth as a filmmaker, shape reality and present it in any form he desires. We see Sammy, in his full power when presenting one of his films to friends and family, standing behind the flickering projector, watching the reactions of the audience. It gives him control in a world where he feels like he has none.
Sammy perhaps feels most powerless at home, especially as his mother’s behavior becomes more erratic with each move. After learning about Arizona, Mitzi loads the kids into the car and drives towards an incoming tornado rather than taking cover, brushing off inquiries about whether or not what she’s doing is dangerous. In California, she buys a pet monkey to keep her company. Meanwhile, Burt seems more interested in getting ahead at RCA and IBM than being involved with his family. Sammy and his two sisters feel caught in between their parents, unsure whether they should gravitate toward art or science.
If there is anywhere that Spielberg stumbles, it’s in casting non-Jewish actors such as Dano and Williams. He populates the rest of the movie with Jewish actors from LaBelle to Rogen to a scene-stealing cameo by Judd Hirsch. Perhaps the logic is that Jewish people present white and therefore casting goyum in key roles wouldn’t be noticeable. Despite the nuance Williams brings to Mitzi, it’s impossible to see her as truly Jewish. Her acting feels like affectation. Dano is easier to swallow but that’s because he doesn’t say much. Normally, it wouldn’t make a difference but, in a film this Jewish, why not cast Jews? Even Adam Sandler would have been more believable than Dano. Spielberg also gives way, as he often does, to sentimentality. Near the end of the film, each parent is allowed to dispense a nugget of advice. “You do what your heart says to do” rings hollow, especially in a movie filled with many authentic scenes. But Spielberg’s gotta have his “The list is life” or “earn this” moment and there it is.
Sammy’s story is the most interesting, and heartbreaking, here. When Burt moves his family to Northern California for Sammy’s senior year in high school, he experiences bullying that is difficult to watch. In his best work, Spielberg can tease out the beauty and the horror that comes with being human. The Fabelmans may feel like nostalgia but it also pushes aside the curtain, allows us to see just how Spielberg learned to manipulate truth using light and sound and magic. How going to the cinema still is his church, his synagogue. A place where we can truly see and perhaps, just maybe, see someone else’s pure truth.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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