The Fabelmans

 

Master film craftsman Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans is as well-constructed as one might expect from Hollywood's most-bankable director, who gets an assist on the screenplay from award-winning stage and film writer Tony Kushner.

In The Fabelmans, Spielberg recounts the times when he discovered his fascination for motion picture spectacle (the train crash scene in The Greatest Show on Earth) and, later, the mystery of the relationship between his parents -- his mother Mitzi, the artistic free spirit (played with abundant grace by Michelle Williams) and his father Burt, the engineering tactician (Paul Dano, who is a studied match for Willliams' exuberance). 

Playing Spielberg's alter ego, Sam, as a schoolboy is wide-eyed Mateo Zoryan (who has an expressive face made for the movies) and as a conflicted teen, the young Canadian-American actor Gabriel LaBelle. They each capably express the movie-maker's aching guardedness, seemingly rooted in the subtle tension between his mismatched parents, a troubled pairing that seems to be embodied in the person of "Uncle" Bennie (Seth Rogen), a family friend who has been riding Burt's coat tails for years. The popular comic actor Seth Rogen is wonderful as the lovable schlub with a peculiar attachment to the Fabelmans.

Both of young Sam's big discoveries are related and offer context for Spielberg's affinity for stories that either merge the fantastic with the homespun (E.T., Close Encounters, A.I., War of the Worlds) or that blend cinematic artistry with technical precision (notably Jaws, The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln).

My screening mate and I agree The Fabelmans is not a great motion picture (based on Spielberg's own standards), but it feels honest and is, unsurprisingly, simply beautiful to watch, affecting and often quite funny.

It was especially gratifying for me to see Judd Hirsch perform a brilliantly crafted scene with young Mr. LaBelle in which Hirsch's character Uncle Boris, the former circus lion tamer, explains, painfully, that an artist must suffer for his art. It's a wonderful moment, what folks used to call a "star turn," and handled by a true pro. Bravo.