TORONTO — There's a terrifically self-reflexive gag in Steven Spielberg's new picture, "The Fabelmans," that is hard to imagine anyone but Steven Spielberg pulling off. This might not be saying much, since the entire movie, a rollicking and ruminative look at the director's childhood and teenage years, could hardly have been made by anyone else. His protagonist, a movie-mad teenager named Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle), has just made use of his considerable filmmaking talent to whittle a high-school nemesis down to size. That's satisfying enough on its own, but then comes the punchline, when Sammy promises never to speak of the incident again — "unless," he adds, with just enough swagger to earn some audience applause, "I make a movie about it."
That movie, of course, is "The Fabelmans" itself, which finds the 75-year-old Spielberg looking back fondly at his 1950s and '60s upbringing, with its mix of family upheaval, teenage turmoil and obsessive movie love. Scholars of the director's early life will see much of it mirrored in Sammy's leisurely unfolding story: his time as a Boy Scout, his early short films, the heartrending divorce of his parents (played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano) and the antisemitic bullying he suffers. You could call this movie, which Universal will open in theaters Nov. 11, an unusually self-indulgent project for Spielberg, a director who's often oscillated between escapist thrill rides and weighty historical dramas. Then again, considering how long it's taken this most beloved of American directors to enshrine his early life on film, you may actually come away from "The Fabelmans" admiring his restraint.
Spielberg is certainly not alone among artists who have recently mined their own lives for creative inspiration. Several other such films screened alongside "The Fabelmans" at the Toronto International Film Festival, like "The Inspection," Elegance Bratton's potent debut feature about his experience as a gay man in the U.S. military. Others have shown up in the past few weeks and months at major festivals including Cannes, Venice and/or Telluride, including "Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths," Alejandro G. Inarritu's vast, searching odyssey inspired by his life, family and career, and "Armageddon Time," James Gray's melancholy drama inspired by a fateful childhood friendship.
