The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #61: "The Fablemans"

The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #61: "The Fablemans"

The 2022-2023 Film Journal Entry #61

By Xavier E. Palacios

"The Fablemans"

3.5 out of 5

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Rated PG-13

An adaptation of writer and director Steven Spielberg's childhood from the 1950s through the late 1960s as portrayed by the fictional Fableman family, featuring the eldest son, Sammy, as he discovers his love of filmmaking amidst great change, such as moving to an anti-Semitic California school and enduring his parents' divorce.

I am glad to finally see The Fablemans, the latest picture from the greatest film director of all time, Steven Spielberg, as I had no chance to see the flick last year. No, really. Somehow, the lowliest of my three local theaters near where I lived until moving to my new place just a year ago recently got Studio Ghibli re-releases. The greatest of the trio is where I saw Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. The middle-tier theater still has the biggest single theater house I have ever seen in an average movie multiplex. But this wide-release film from Spielberg had no showings at any of my theaters. Go figure.

Anyhow, I admit that this picture, upon first impression, is not one of my favorites from a director whose work I more or less was born adoring the instant I watched Jurassic Park on a VHS tape in the late-1990s. Of course, the filmmaking of the piece is extraordinary. The visual texture has a very important quality I will return to in a moment. John Williams' score is the standard piano goodness everyone knows and loves him for. Michael Khan, Spielberg's longtime editor, makes some fantastic cuts that distinguish The Fablemans from most 2022 flicks. The OG himself can still direct actors just right and get fine work out of them. I feel pretty much every actor in this flick is excellent, and doing this kind of naturalistic yet cinematic style must be pretty difficult for any performer to get right. There are also some memorable moments of drama, wonder, and empathy throughout the story: scenes where I remember the spark of naked adoration I used to have for cinema and the anxiety of watching the intimate disasters that happen behind closed doors between family members.

Oh, and the final five minutes or so, especially the last shot, are fricking gold, even if one living legend was not directing another living legend, David Lynch, who plays another legend who currently lives in another plane of existence, the director John Ford. Gold.

But, as a whole, I could understand, though I certainly do not agree, why people could call The Fablemans a self-indulgent, "artsy-fartsy", or sentimental work. This last term is a word Spielberg's critics often use, and I will also be tackling that idea in a moment. I love that Spielberg finally got to make the film about his family which he has been threatening to do for ages. Still, seeing the flick at last, I am not exactly sure what to take away from the piece. I certainly did not walk away from the film with any kind of great catharsis.

Maybe this take of the film being average is because I already know Spielberg's history so well, based on my longtime study of the filmmaker. None of the content is especially surprising to me, though may be for likely the majority who do not know his history and consider him some classical titan living beside the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Or, maybe such a personal story does not exactly work best in the medium of film. Perhaps we as a species are so used to the infinite moving pictures in our own minds when we hear someone recount their past that placing these private, forgotten histories through the filter of the silver screen somehow diminishes these tales. Nevertheless, The Fablemans is an experiment worth experiencing, just not an extraordinary one for me personally.