The Fabelmans : birth of a passion
Steven Spielberg’s new film opens in New Jersey in January 1952. As he prepares to attend his first film screening, little Sammy Fabelman is worried. But faced with the tragic train accident of Under the biggest tent in the world, fascination overcomes fear. In the process, his parents Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) offer him a miniature circuit, which allows the boy to reproduce the famous sequence, and then try his hand at directing.
Over the years Sammy grows up, connects the short films involving his family and friends. In these projects that are already not lacking in ambition, Steven Spielberg enjoys shooting iconic elements of his cinema, without falling into the compilation of winking sequences.
The amazement of the spectator that is gradually becomes that of the director we know. Making war and adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark AND We have to save Private Ryan, discovers the tricks of the trade to create a real show. When she realizes a project for her high school class, she understands the power of manipulating images, making a teenager who likes to pick on him beautiful, attractive and almost likable.
pain and joy
The Fabelmans it’s not just a simple love letter to the cinema. Sammy’s calling is certainly a source of joy, but so is it revealer of painful secrets and asks him for many sacrifices. It is through her images of her that the adolescent witnesses the disintegration of the family and becomes aware of the true wishes of her mother, stuck in a marriage and in an everyday life that she can no longer support.
After the fabulous first minutes amplified by photography by Janusz Kaminski, the most touching scenes of The Fabelmans are the ones that capture the despair in the eyes of Michelle Williams, a pianist who has given up and does everything to hide her pain. The actress is once again very good, especially during a heartbreaking quarrel with her son which perfectly sums up the complexity of their relationship. Added to this is a wonderful passage in which Mitzi dances in front of Sammy’s camera and under the loving gaze of her silent husband. A moment of calm with which Steven Spielberg returns to the sources of the seventh artfair activity that sublimates reality.
This relationship also pushes Sammy to follow his wishes and take a different path. As his great-uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) tells him during a brief but brilliant appearance, art is not a game but a dangerous exercise, which requires a lot and presents anyone who tries it with difficult dilemmas. A character who, associated with his father Burt and Mitzi, summarizes the relationship with art, capable of crushing but which can also be considered as something futile or unattainable.
A shocking modesty
So what to choose between solitude and devotion to a martyred family, between drama and levity, between idealism and resignation? These are the questions, which have probably never ceased to torment him during his fifty-year career, that Steven Spielberg highlights in this great new feature film.
And if the fact of finding teenagers riding their bikesAnd the extraterrestrial may give the impression that the director has lost none of his supposed child’s soul, seldom has sadness been felt so much in one of his works since War of the Worlds AND Monk. A sadness that he doesn’t seem to want to dwell on and that he treats with modesty, probably refusing to fall into a smug introspection.
Be that as it may, and as it happened recently in Pentagon documents AND Ready Player One, passion ends up winning and making people forget – or at least accept – suffering. This is what the last camera movement suggests, with which he offers a final touch of levity and rejects fate as he always has, with incredible skill. The Fabelmans it is a gesture that deserves to be well digested in order to appreciate its full depth and the phenomenal measure.
The Fabelmans by Steven Spielberg, in theaters on February 22, 2023. Above the trailer. Find all our trailers here.
Source: Cine Serie
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