Young Sammy Fabelman falls in love with movies after his parents take him to see "The Greatest Show on Earth." Armed with a camera, Sammy starts to make his own films at home, much to the delight of his supportive mother.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch, David Lynch
Release Date: November 11, 2022
Genre: Drama
Rated PG-13 for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use.
Runtime: 2h 31m
Steven Spielberg's The Fablemans is a tender, thematically dense quasi-autobiography that shows the power of film and its effect on people. Initially, his film is a light bit of idyllic nostalgia as he discovers cinema and his nascent filmmaking as a child. Slowly, he reveals small fractures in his home life as he continues to explore his love of filmmaking. Gabriel LaBelle delivers an excellent central performance as Sammy Fableman. LaBelle gives the character a likable authenticity that makes his coming of age journey engaging and relatable as his family moves from New Jersey to Arizona and finally California. It’s a subtle performance as his character traverses a wide range of emotions and experiences since the film covers a large swath of time. Michelle Williams gets the showier role and delivers a textured heartfelt turn as his loving mother. Williams' performance reveals itself as the story moves along with her free spirted, artistic soul collapsing under itself as she's increasingly feeling trapped in a life she never wanted. There's a palatable sense of yearning for her unrealized dreams that drives the film and Sammy throughout. Paul Dano does yeoman's work as the loving and kind but decidedly analytical patriarch of the family. It’s a reserved, measured turn that only gives you glimpses his heartbreak. Seth Rogen and Judd Hirsch have small but important supporting roles with each actor making the most of their screen time. The film's unhurried pace might turn off for some since it moves at a decidedly methodical pace. That pace, though, does allow you to digest more of the underlying themes about film and its ability to refocus perceptions and truth, something explicitly addressed in a telling scene between Sammy and a high school bully in the final act. It’s a testament to Spielberg that he knowingly acknowledges that this sanitized, glossy retelling of his upbringing veers somewhere between truth and tale.
A-
