Criticism of ‘The Fabelmans’, Spielberg according to Spielberg

The secret is on the horizon. John Ford knew it well (in a memorable cameo by David Lynch) who advises this enthusiastic apprentice of the trade who, now, after more than half a century, still remembers the meeting, and rectifies his camera so that the horizon is a deposit of the future for his alter ego. Because, in ‘The Fabelmans’, for Spielberg the horizon is something more than a question of staging. It is that fine, fickle line that separates the truth and the lie, the two faces of that art that saved his (us) life. The most beautiful thing about this magnificent confessional film, in which fidelity to the real events is not as important as the version that is given of them, is the way in which Spielberg explains his vision of the world through the act of creating images. Repeating, on a small scale, the train accident from ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, he discovers that the amusement cinema is the best antidote to silence fears and traumas. Directing actors in an amateur war movie, he discovers that the manipulation of emotions can get to the heart of the truth. Editing a domestic film, in what is perhaps the most beautiful sequence of ‘The Fabelmans’, he understands that, in the abysses that open up between frames, what the eyes refuse to see can be revealed. projecting a beach movie from high school who has filmed horseback riding, he realizes that cinema is also a perverse form of revenge. No image is innocent, Spielberg tells us, and that is precisely what makes cinema a reflection of the human condition..

‘The Fabelmans’ happens to be Spielberg’s most personal film, although it would be more appropriate to describe it as the most directly autobiographical. As if ‘ET The Extra Terrestrial’ (1982), ‘AI, Artificial Intelligence’ (2001) or ‘Catch Me If You Can’ (2002) were not personal films; anyway, as if Spielberg had never imagined himself an abandoned child on the island of his dreams, as if the conflictive relationship with father and mother figures had never occupied a central place in his filmography.. In his loving but unforgiving portrait of his family ecosystem, his mother wins out, an inspired Michelle Williams, a housewife whose giddy, bipolar enthusiasm, imprisoned in the gilded cage of the American dream, understands artistic practice as art. of flight, necessary to survive the disappointments of the real. Spielberg had a great teacher.

For lovers of initiation stories mounted on moviola

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DATA SHEET

Address: Steven Spielberg Distribution: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Gabriel LaBelle, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch Country: USA Year: 2022 Release date: 10–2-2023 Gender: Drama Script: Tony KushnerSteven Spielberg Duration: 151 min.

Synopsis: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, an Arizona boy named Sammy Fabelman discovers a devastating family secret and explores how the power of movies can help him tell stories and forge his own identity.