In
May 1977 my parents and I saw George Lucas’s Star Wars and my life
changed forever. We saw it July with other family members and a third time in
November prior to the release of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (henceforth abbreviated as CE3K). The trailer
for CE3K was mysterious and intense to my young eyes and the prospect of
seeing it again led me to turn down my parent’s offer to sit through Star
Wars a second time after that afternoon’s showing. What frightened me about
the trailer was not the chaotic scenes with Richard Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon,
but rather the sequence wherein Bob Balaban and Francois Truffaut approach
Richard Dreyfuss in a claustrophobic makeshift room to interrogate him about
what he has seen, reminding me of my first trip to what I considered to be the
Ninth Circle of Hell: THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE. In retrospect, I am amused by
this memory and my initial impression of the film.
If
you look at the history of Steven Spielberg’s work, his films are about many
things, not the least of which is people’s impressions of the world around
them. Additionally, a common theme that runs throughout much of his work is the
notion of broken families or absent parents. Beginning with his film debut, The
Sugarland Express (1974), and continuing with the father who is not around
much for his young children in Jaws (1975), or a UFO-obsessed power
plant worker who leaves his family for other worlds in the aforementioned CE3K,
or a lonely young boy who feels a connection to an alien in E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial (1982), or the broken family that needs to come together
to survive in War of the Worlds (2005), to name a few, authority figures
are often anything but authoritative. His latest film, the wonderful and semi-autobiographical
The Fabelmans, is a story that has existed in Mr. Spielberg’s mind all
his life and finally needed to come out during the height of the coronavirus
pandemic during worldwide downtime, if it was going to come out at all. Collaborating
with writer Tony Kushner for the fourth time, Mr. Spielberg gives the audience
a sense of what his turbulent childhood was like.
Although
Mr. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, OH, his family moved around due to his
father’s position as an electrical engineer in the burgeoning computer industry.
In The Fabelmans, Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano standing in for real-life
father Arnold Spielberg) and Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams standing in for
real-life mother Leah Adler) take their young son Sammy (Mateo Zoryan) to see his
first movie, Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, in Haddon
Township, NJ in 1952. The spectacular train crash seen on screen both
captivates and frightens him. Using his father’s 8mm camera with his mother’s
secretive permission, he recreates it with his train set that he received for
Hanukkah, and this gives Sammy the confidence to start shooting films involving
friends and his three younger sisters.
Years
later, Sammy is much older and now portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle. His father is
offered a better job, and this takes them to Phoenix, AZ along with Burt’s
friend and business associate Benny Loewy (played endearingly by Seth Rogen). Sammy
shoots footage of them all on a camping trip, including a headlight-illuminated
dance performed by his mother in her nightgown, which makes a deep impression
on Benny. Following Mitzi’s mother’s passing and her subsequent sadness, Burt urges
Sammy to create a little film of the camping trip to cheer her up, which he
does begrudgingly while he is shooting a film with his fellow Boy Scouts. In
the film’s most inspired moment, the family’s Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch in a
wonderful performance) briefly visits, giving Sammy a spirited monologue about the
discord between art and familial responsibility. The turning point in the film
comes when Sammy sorts through the campfire footage, only to discover that
“Uncle” Benny is showing more than a passing interest in Mitzi: they are caught
holding hands and getting too close for comfort in the background images. Sammy
is shellshocked. After more strife, the family is uprooted yet again, this time
to Southern California, where he encounters both severe antisemitism at the
hands of two school bullies and experiences first love with a devoutly Christian
girl who puts Jesus first. More turmoil ensues, and Sammy ultimately learns to
use his natural gift for filmmaking to deal with personal traumas and bending
others to his will.
Steven
Spielberg is my favorite director, and he shares the number one spot for me in
a tie with Stanley Kubrick. Both men have made extraordinarily entertaining and
mind-bending films. It was a constant joy to watch The Fablemans as it
gives the audience a window into the person who would go on to become the
creative genius who not only makes great movies but is also and deservedly
financially successful at it.
I
met Leah Adler in November 2008 when I was getting ready to come home from a
horror film convention. She owned a restaurant called Milky
Way, which opened in
1977, and when I walked in, she was there to greet me. I began gushing about
her son, how CE3K was the first film of his that I saw and how it blew
me away, what Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. meant to me, etc.
She guided me over to a table and listened intently to my rambling, and when I
thanked her for encouraging Steven to become a filmmaker, she paused and simply
said, “I don’t know where the hell he came from.” This made me burst out
laughing as I have always thought of her son as the best friend I never met
(not entirely true: I waited outside the Ziegfeld Theater in June 2005 for
eight hours the day of the War of the Worlds premiere and managed to get
his autograph and snap a few photos of him). If he and I grew up together, we
would have been inseparable – watching movies, talking about movies, making
movies, you name it. My own parents were not movie fanatics by any means, and
they could just as easily have said the same thing about me! The few times that
my family went on vacation, I was enlisted to shoot the home movies. When I was
fourteen on vacation in Florida, I began shooting our home movies from a
cinematic perspective. This is due to Steven Spielberg.
Todd Garbarini with Leah Adler, November, 2008. (Photo: Todd Garbarini).
The
new 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray combo is now available from Valentine’s
Day, appropriate as this film is a Valentine to Mr. Spielberg’s parents. It
comes with some extras, and I had my fingers crossed that the director would
have provided an audio commentary (something that he flatly refuses to do as he
wants his films to speak for themselves and feels that it’s a way to lifting a
curtain behind the magic), however he has stuck to his guns and I must respect
his decision. It does feature some nice extras:
The
first piece is called The Fabelmans: A Personal Journey and runs 11:00.
It focuses on comments by producer Kristie Macosko Kriger, who is on board with
the director for the ninth time; co-writer Tony Kushner, and how the film came
about, the product of a conversation while the director was shooting Munich
in Malta in 2005.
The
second piece is named Family Dynamics and runs 15:28. Much of the cast
of the film discusses their feelings and interpretations of the real-life
people they portray in the film.
The
third and final extra is called Crafting the World of The Fabelmans and
runs 22:04. This is a bit more in-depth with input from Production Designer
Rick Carter; Costume Designer Mark Bridges; Directory of Photography Januz
Kaminski; Property Master Andrew M. Siegel; Editors Michael Khan (on his 30th
film with the director) and Sarah Broshar; Actress Chloe East; Actors Sam
Rechner and Oakes Fegley; and Maestro/Composer John Williams.
The set also includes a digital version for streaming.
While
the film is a no-brainer for Spielberg completists, being one is not a
prerequisite as it can be enjoyed as a work of fiction for those who do not
idolize the subject of the film.
The
Fabelmans is an example of
life not only imitating art, but art imitating life as well.