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Steven Spielberg has been directing films for so many decades that it's actually a little surprising that the semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans (2022) took this long to materialize. Because of his years of success as a filmmaker, I already knew some details of Spielberg's rise to the successful director that he is today. Granted, I'm not sure how much of the family drama in The Fabelmans is a direct influence on Spielberg's life or if he manufactured it for the movie itself. Still, it is interesting to see the early budding talent presented in this movie and be able to extrapolate to movies like Jaws (1975), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Schindler's List (1993).

Perhaps my one qualm with this movie is that it's a bit too long. I understand the desire to show the entire life of Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) to understand the context of the origins of his filmmaking passion, but there could have been much shorter ways to show these moments instead of dedicating almost the entire first act to something that was much less exciting than the rest of the film. Even if it started in the second act, The Fabelmans easily captures that struggle between family and living the life of a dedicated creative.

I really appreciated the conversation about how pursuing a creative passion can really be a challenge for an individual's personal life. Similar to how the leads in La La Land (2016) had to choose between themselves and their dreams, The Fabelmans shows how having an additional way to communicate (in this case, via filmmaking) can sometimes break through barriers and expose hard truths. The unblinking eye of the camera often sees more than we want, whether the bipolar disorder and affair of a mother or how a bully sees themselves as the hero.

A thoughtful if not slightly long autobiography of Steven Spielberg, I give The Fabelmans 4.0 stars out of 5.

There is a tendency these last years for directors to create movies about their love of movies. This movie is Spielberg's attempt, and I can confirm that it's pretty well achieved. You can feel the "true story" in the ways in which this coming-of-age story avoids melodramatic teenage cliches and tropes. The protagonist is simply a good guy. There are no real antagonists except... I guess a couple of bullies...? It's a story that simply proves Spielberg's unmatched proficiency in the language of cinema: the pacing, the directing, is very refined and well-crafted, there's a lot of sentimentality that is efficiently conveyed and the visuals are always engaging in one way or another.

Spielberg is a weird director, one that basically is simply very good at doing what he does, he talks the language of movies, Hollywood movies. He's one of those producers that turns every pop song into a hit. He doesn't have a strong sense of story, he lives and breaths in the Hollywood mainstream, and the movie portrays this very well, it shows how he is inspired by action movies, or epic movies, any entertaining story. His alter ego in the film is a very normal lead character, a very Hollywood-type of character. The best moments in the story are the interaction with his family, his complex relationship with his mother (really beautifully performed). I don't find a lot else to say, really. The only nitpick I have to offer is that the main character wears these extremely distracting brown contact lenses (I suppose to make his eyes look "genetically accurate) and I don't understand how necessary that was. The movie is simply a very conventionally well told story. Also the Lynch cameo is admittedly a moving tribute both to him and to his character of John Ford. It's slow in parts but not grating, some moments are chuckle-worthy, some are moving. It's a testament to Spielberg's insane versatility and his ability to just serve the medium of Hollywood films. I'm probably going to forget this movie in a while, but I will gladly revisit it. It's a cute movie, very cozy and feel-good, a nice Christmas family watch.

Lynch's last role, that's why I wanted to see it. For some reason, the film didn't get carried away at the release. I like to make mistakes and discover such amazing paintings after a while.

A movie about cinema and love for it.

Throughout the life of the main character, the movie goes along with him to one degree or another. At first, it amazes him as a viewer, but very soon he starts filming it himself. If in childhood it could be called a hobby, then it develops further to the vocation of a lifetime.

He makes short films, then full-fledged films, which, although they are shot for his own money and shown only to the participants in the filming, still touch the audience.

In fact, each film shot inside the film reflects the gradual development of the hero as a director and personality.

He is going through a drama in his family, relationships with peers and a girlfriend, but only cinema and the craving for it as the meaning of life helps to overcome all this and eventually succeed.

Also, the film is beautifully shot in terms of technical components, and every acting job pleases the eye and you, as a viewer, empathize with all the characters. They are prescribed and you believe in their problems.

It's watching Steven Spielberg grow up from a child terrified by the train crash in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, to an adolescent film maker. He's pretty up front about the family issues and his parents' break up. I suspect he has realized that being an adult is a tough thing and is willing to forgive.

At 150 minutes, it should feel self indulgent, but it never does, thanks to terrific performances by Michelle Williams as the mother and Paul Dano as the father. No one seems to be acting, which is half the Spielberg magic. There are also great cameos by Judd Hirsch as the profane uncle who was a lion tamer, and David Lynch as John Ford.

Some of the characters seem sketchily drawn, particularly the sisters, but that serves to emphasize Miss Williams, Dano, and Gabriel LaBelle as the Steven Spielberg character. Spielberg and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, have drawn a fine portrait of a Jewish post-war family, when things were supposed to be so very bland... but really, people were living their own odd lives.

I have been interested in this film since the moment I heard about it. As a kid whose first memorable movie theater experience was E. T., no filmmaker has more influenced the way I experience movies than Spielberg...and nothing influenced those movies more than his parents' divorce. So I was 100% ready for a personal tale, an origin story without capes or superpowers. No CGI. No motion capture. Just a movie about the power of families and stories through the eyes of a kid. It is just that... But it is more too. There's a generosity in the way that Spielberg makes sense of his own story after the fact. Nobody is a villain or hero. They are just people choosing between happiness and responsibility while realizing slowly and painfully that it may not have to be either/or. There were scenes that worked better than others (and I am still sorting through the third act), but it was fun to see him tell a story like this, whether it was his own or not.