The Fabelmans (12A, 151 mins)
Verdict: full of heart
Rating: ****
Steven Spielberg’s cinematic love letter to his parents, to the art of filmmaking and, frankly, to himself, is coming to the big screen, endorsed by a string of Oscar nominations.
They are well deserved. The Fabelmans is imbued with warmth, tenderness and charm, while giving us compelling insight into how the most successful filmmaker of all time, at least when assessed in purely commercial terms, became obsessed with the medium that would make him a billionaire. as well as a familiar name.
In the film, that name is Sammy Fabelman (played younger by Mateo Zoryan and a teenager by the excellent Gabriel LaBelle). Still, the fiction is thin.
The Fabelmans has been described as semi-autobiographical, but one should probably make that seven-eighths.
Pictured: Paul Dano and Michelle Williams with Mateo Zoryan as young Sammy
The close “friend” of Spielberg’s parents, for whom his mother (Michelle Williams) eventually left his father (Paul Dano), was “uncle” Bernie in real life. Here, only one letter is changed. Played with charisma by Seth Rogen, he becomes Uncle Bennie.
The story begins in 1952, with young Sammy taken by his parents to the cinema for the first time, to see Cecil B. DeMille’s extravaganza, The Greatest Show On Earth.
He is both fascinated and horrified by a train wreck scene, which he compulsively recreates over and over again at home with his toy train.
Burt, his father (who was called Arnold in real life), loses patience with him. But her warm, fickle, brash, and emotionally unstable mother, Mitzi (who was actually Leah), is more in tune with her needs.
Gently, she suggests that if he films the accident just once with his father’s 8mm camera, he can watch it repeatedly without further damaging his trains. In other words, he can satisfy his creative impulses and even solve his blockages with a camera. This is where the seed is planted which, in the untold part of the story, will grow into powerful images such as Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.
Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) and Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg
Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy Fabelman in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg
Spielberg and his co-writer, acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner, focus on Sammy’s relationship with both of his parents. Dano plays Burt as a kind man, a devoted father to Sammy and his three younger sisters, but disparaging Sammy’s budding interest in movies. If only the boy spent so much time on his algebra!
Burt is also a workaholic whose success as the first computer engineer continues to force the family to move west from New Jersey. They settle first in Arizona, then in California, far from the comforting embrace of a nearby Jewish community in neighborhoods where the occasional anti-Semitism feels organic, practically part of the water system or the soil.
This prejudice is also formative for Sammy as he goes through his teenage years.
Now he makes dramatic shorts every weekend, but when asked to chronicle a high school day at the beach, he shoots it, perhaps with deliberate irony, a bit like Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl made Triumph Of The Will (1935). He portrays his chief anti-Semitic tormentor as a divine athlete, and the tyrant, who dubbed him “Bagelman”, has the spirit to be embarrassed.
It’s Sammy who fights back, just like Spielberg did, using his camera as a weapon.
Reggie Fabelman (Julia Butters) and Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) star in Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film
Once we accept that The Fabelmans are seven-eighths autobiographical, we all benefit
Yet the camera has the power to undermine his world as much as to improve it. It is while editing the film of a camping trip that he realizes, for the first time, the closeness between his mother and Uncle Bennie. Soon the family is torn apart, whose lasting significance once again lies more in the untold story than the one on screen. The divorce of Spielberg’s parents when he was a teenager had a clear influence on his storytelling.
There’s plenty of sweet humor in The Fabelmans (especially when Sammy acquires a devout Christian girlfriend), and some cherished performances, especially by Williams, who is well worth this week’s Oscar nomination as wife-child Mitzi.
Incidentally, its namesake, composer John Williams, already nominated for more Oscars than anyone else in history, will make even more history if he wins for the Fabelmans’ beautiful score. He will be, at 91, the oldest person ever to receive the coveted statuette.
The almost equally venerable Judd Hirsch, another nominee at the age of 87, gets a stage-stealing cameo as great-uncle Boris, thundering through the family home and returning after seducing Sammy with work stories in the motion picture industry in the 1920s.
Unlike Burt, Uncle Boris recognizes the value of Sammy’s involvement in film. “You love family, but I think you love it a little more,” he says.
He’s right, and 60 years later, once we accept that The Fabelmans is seven-eighths autobiographical, we all benefit.
This is your captain speaking: tie up your haggis!
The insane action thriller Plane (15, 107 min, ★★✩✩✩) is almost dumb enough to be called Airplane! It stars Gerard Butler as commercial airline pilot Brodie Torrance, who says “haggis, neeps and tatties” in the opening moments of the film, just to confirm he is indeed Scottish.
Brodie is everything an easily satisfied audience could want from an action hero: the only real question is whether he will face a devastating lightning strike on his plane, causing him to miraculously fall safely on a jungle road on an island in the southern Philippines. by murderous separatists, before his muscles finally come out of his uniform.
The silly action-thriller Plane, starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, is almost silly enough to be called Airplane!
Anyway, after saving all of his passengers once, he has to do it again with the help of an equally muscular convict (Mike Colter) who was on the plane handcuffed, battered an extradition charge. Luckily, in addition to being the world’s greatest pilot, Brodie is fantastic at close-to-the-death combat and is a gifted amateur telecommunications engineer. Almost incidentally, he is also the greatest father in the world and, for more emotion, a grieving widower.
Whether he succeeds in his perilous mission is anyone’s guess, in a story that has all the authenticity of a crook’s smile, but unfolds with a kind of madcap energy that might appeal to those looking for hollow entertainment. to popcorn.
Shotgun Wedding (15, 100 min. ★★✩✩✩), which also features armed Filipino guerrillas, is at least intentionally silly. Available on Amazon Prime Video, it’s yet another rom-com starring Jennifer Lopez as a middle-aged bride, but not even as good as last year’s Marry Me.
This time, J-Lo plays Darcy, whose dream island wedding to Tom (Josh Duhamel) is hijacked by the aforementioned guerrillas, who hold all the guests hostage. It’s terribly flimsy, but it casts Jennifer Coolidge as a character surprisingly similar to the one she played in the TV hit The White Lotus. As the bride’s voluptuous new stepmom, she gets all the best lines.
If it were up to me, the gongs would go to…
Oscar organizers don’t need a slap in the face from Will Smith to smear their lavish ceremony; they are quite capable of doing it themselves.
The decision to increase the number of Best Picture nominees to ten is nonsense, giving Top Gun: Maverick an honor this year that eluded such all-time greats as The Searchers (1956), Some Like It Hot (1959) and Psycho (1960). It’s a perfectly good action movie, and it did fantastic business, but it’s not really the best movie.
The Deeply Odd Everything, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once shouldn’t be in contention for the main gong either, let alone lead the overall race with 11 nominations.
Fortunately, the academy has been successful in other departments. I’m especially thrilled to see Bill Nighy named best actor. All those floaty, sleazy characters he plays do him no favors, but he gives an immaculate and career-best performance in the quietly heartbreaking life.
He would be my choice but I wouldn’t be sorry to see the statuette go to Colin Farrell, shining in The Banshees Of Inisherin, my 2022 film.
In the Best Actress list, I would have liked to see Taylor Russell nominated for the amazing original Bones And All, Luca Guadagnino’s daring romantic horror film, which should also be nominated for Best Picture. But Cate Blanchett will surely win for TAR, as it should.
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