“I need to see them crash.” These are the first fated words of a future filmmaker, Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord), whispered to his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) after he’s crashed his toy train after bedtime, inspired by his very first big-screen cinematic experience, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Mitzi instantly recognizes that re-creating the train crash is a way for young Sammy to exert some control over the fear he felt during the movie, and so she presents him with his father’s 8mm camera to capture, and replay, the crash. With this lesson on art as catharsis imprinted in his young mind, a movie director is born.
In the deeply personal “The Fabelmans,” legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg applies his artistic instincts to his own familial catharsis, turning his lens on his own upbringing, his childhood journey to becoming a filmmaker, and his parents. What could have been some kind of auto-hagiography is a playful, honest and ultimately gracious childhood memoir that derives its universal lessons from its specificity.
“The Fabelmans” is simultaneously the story of how a filmmaker comes to be, the product of an artist and an engineer, and a reckoning with, or setting the record straight, about his parents’ relationship, which has been shared before in interviews and in the 2017 documentary “Spielberg.” It is also, on a more spiritual level, an attempt to capture the drive to be an artist and what following that dream entails, and philosophically, about what it means to see or be seen through the lens of a camera.
