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The Fabelmans Review: Williams Is A Standout In Spielberg's Heartfelt Drama [TIFF]
When looking at one’s own past, it can be easy to see things through rose-colored glasses. Director and writer Steven Spielberg does a little of that in The Fabelmans, a feature based on his own past and family. However, the majority of the film allows Spielberg to look back and reflect on the past through a fictionalized lens. The result is a sensitive rendering of the director’s family life. Co-written by Tony Kushner and bolstered by a strong cast, The Fabelmans is sincere, moving, and focused as it unfolds the family drama at its center.
Predominantly set in the 1960s, The Fabelmans follows Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), a 16-year-old with a passion for making home movies. Sammy, along with his family — mother Mitzi (Michelle Williams), a pianist, father Burt (Paul Dano), a computer engineer, and sisters Reggie (Julia Butters), Natalie (Keeley Karsten), Lisa (Sophia Kopera), and Burt’s best friend Bennie (Seth Rogen) — move from New Jersey to Arizona to California because of Burt’s work. After Sammy discovers a family secret, things begin to fall apart around him and his movies become his only refuge.
The Fabelmans is warm and earnest. It's certainly less about Steven Spielberg's famed movie career so much as it is about his origins and, crucially, his family. At its heart, the film is about discovering and dissecting family through a different lens. At the start of the film, Sammy sees his parents one way and by the end in a very different, perhaps more human, way. Spielberg is a child of divorce, and he spends the majority of the movie trying to understand his mother and what drives her. Sammy is compared to her a lot, and it's perhaps through this lens, and after many years of grappling with her actions, that the director can look back now and truly see her.
To that end, Michelle Williams gives a standout performance, depicting Mitzi as a complicated woman who aches to be seen. She isn't portrayed as selfish or villainous for her feelings or actions and Williams' effective performance allows the audience to empathize with her. Williams is melancholy and loving, distant, sad and full of hope and joy. She comes alive in moments while her eyes stray in others. It's an incredibly nuanced performance and Williams is nothing short of magnificent. Gabriel LaBelle is solid in a role that requires his character to keep mostly to himself. However, every emotion is portrayed and realized, with an understanding of where Sammy is coming from, even when he doesn't have the words to convey it. Paul Dano is always great, though he gets less to do here, and he imbues Burt with sensitivity, heart, and understanding, especially when it comes to Mitzi.
While lovely and heartwarming, funny and emotionally effective, The Fabelmans is also overly neat and sanitized. It's perfectly aware that it is a tale about things that happened, fictionalized for the audience, a story about a story. But it also doesn't work very hard to explore the family dynamics any further than it has to, with Sammy often retreating to his room to edit his films, distancing himself from his siblings and parents. This leaves his relationships with his younger sisters especially lacking, with the majority of the conflict centered on his mother's relationship with Bennie and how that affects the family dynamic thereafter.
That said, The Fabelmans is still quite lovely, with tender and vulnerable moments throughout. There's an air of tranquility about it and Spielberg does well to balance a few comedic moments with a whole lot of heart. Even the more dramatic moments are depicted with patience and warmth. It's as if Spielberg is softly wading through his own memories, pulling open the doors to see each one with a lot of light and love in tow. It makes for a thoughtful, engaging viewing, one that is enthralling, hopeful, and touching. It doesn’t lose its sense of self, and Spielberg is more than happy to keep things close enough and simultaneously at arm’s length. The film leans into the idea that stories can help one not only cope, but discover new layers to their own lives, which helps them to see it better. This is Sammy’s journey throughout, and his love of film — and by extension Spielberg’s — genuinely shines through.
The Fabelmans had its Toronto International Film Festival premiere on September 10, 2022. The film releases in limited theaters November 11, expanding nationwide on November 23. It is 151 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for some strong language, thematic elements, brief violence and drug use.
