Most films never attempt the breathtaking impact of a truly transformative moment; a lucky few manage one, perhaps two.
This film has many.
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| The magic, transformational moment: As his parents (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams) watch, young Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) is blown away by his first big-screen movie experience. |
Along the way, this quietly compelling story — co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner (Angels in America) — is a moving coming-of-age saga: poignant, whimsical, occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious, and (aren’t they always?) heartbreaking. It’s also a classic American narrative about heading west to find new fortune and freedom.
As for Spielberg’s insistence that it’s merely semi-autobiographical … well, it’s actually far more accurate than most big-screen films claiming to be wholly biographical.
Events begin in snowy, stormy New Jersey in 1952. Young Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) is about to be taken to his first movie by parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams). The boy is frightened by the notion of confronting “giant people” — a concern no doubt influenced by anticipatory descriptions from his excessively technical father (about whom, more in a moment) — but his mother assures him the experience will be magical.
The film in question is The Greatest Show on Earth, and we eavesdrop as the boy’s eyes go wide during the climactic train wreck (which is a stunning sequence even today, and must’ve blown the minds of patrons at the time).
It’s Christmastime, and Burt makes a weak joke about having trouble finding their house, as they return home after the movie. “It’s the dark one,” Sammy grouses, disappointed by their lack of holiday lights.
He also has been dithering about what he wants for Hanukkah, but inspiration suddenly strikes. Over the course of the celebration’s eight days — in a charming montage — he receives the individual cars, transformer and locomotive of a Lionel train set.
Burt Fabelman is the epitome of the buttoned-down “company man” ethos of mid-century America: a World War II veteran — who never discusses his service — and stiffly precise technical wonk blessed with a flair for the embryonic field of computer design. Dano makes him quiet, thoughtful and excessively thorough, often to the glassy-eyed incomprehension of his children. Burt can't merely take his children to a movie; he first insists on explaining frames per second and persistence of vision.
But Burt also is kind, devoted to his family — he never raises his voice — and impressively patient: the latter quality essential, in the face of his wife’s bold personality and turbulent soul.
Williams’ Mitzi is a force of nature: dreamy, impulsive, even reckless. She’s also a talented pianist; their home contains a grand piano, which she plays often, and movingly. Indeed, she could have been an accomplished concert musician, but — like so many women of her generation — she sublimated her ambitions and desires in order to embrace the “socially acceptable” roles of housewife and mother.
The decision clearly cost Mitzi dearly. Williams’ posture feels fragile: a porcelain creature, subject to breakage. Her stare can be distant, as if she’s able to see the person she might have become, in an alternate reality. The radiance of Mitzi’s smile notwithstanding, she’s often deeply unhappy.
Burt, although perceiving her increasing ennui, doesn’t know how to help.
Dinners are a lively family affair, often attended by Sammy’s grandmothers. Mitzi’s mother, Tina Schildkraut (Robin Bartlett), is loving and supportive, enthusiastic about the creativity and imagination displayed by Sammy and his younger sisters, and untroubled by Mitzi’s unconventional (read: lax) homemaking skills. Tina is jolly and all curves: a grandmother you’d love to hug.
Burt’s mother Hadassah (Jeannie Berlin), in contrast, is nothing but sharp angles and disapproving stares: hyper-opinionated and clearly No Fun At All.
Then there’s “Uncle” Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogen), Burt’s best friend and colleague at RCA, a frequent fixture in the Fabelman household. He’s jovial, loose and lively; no surprise, Sammy and his sisters adore him.
By this point, armed with a small 8mm movie camera, Sammy has become a budding filmmaker, turning his younger sisters into all manner of characters and creatures. He also has become obsessed by his train set, but not in the usual manner; he can’t get the images from The Greatest Show on Earth out of his head, and he wonders how that train wreck was accomplished. What made the sequence so powerful?
Time passes. Burt’s innovative work in data storage systems lands him a job with General Electric, which takes the family — and Bennie — to Arizona. Life here is grand; Sammy (now played by Gabriel LaBelle) joins the Boy Scouts, where he has a troop of willing — and quite enthusiastic — actors for his increasingly ambitious amateur movies. Sammy’s cameras and editing equipment have become more impressive; he now films almost constantly, whether family outings or scripted mini-dramas.
And then — suddenly, fatefully — one day Sammy discovers that the camera often sees what the human eye overlooks (which, of course, is at the very heart of cinematic storytelling).
Events come to a head when Burt lands a job at IBM, and relocates his family to Northern California: a move that nobody likes, particularly Sam (no longer Sammy), who — now in high school — confronts the ugly specter of anti-Semitism.
(We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.)
LaBelle persuasively navigates his character’s passion and developing maturity with richly nuanced expressions, body language and line deliveries.
Along the way, and from the beginning, the most powerful moments in this film occur as we watch these characters look at things. Williams’ performance is shattering, breathtaking, when Mitzi watches one of Sam’s film reels in a darkened closet; the transformation of her features, during Kaminski’s relentlessly tight close-up, is amazing.
Dano’s similar moment, quieter but no less moving, comes after Burt sees a photograph.
Judd Hirsch appears briefly, but tellingly, as Mitzi’s “mysterious” black-sheep Uncle Boris. Hirsch, intensely riveting, borderline terrifying, damn near steals the film during his fleeting five minutes. Boris, immediately perceiving Sammy’s artistic drive, warns that such a calling is irresistible and all-consuming, and will — as a result — exact a dear cost in all other areas of life.
At which point, the penny drops: Ignoring such a calling, or burying it — as Mitzi has done — can lead to madness.
Chloe East is a stitch, once the Fabelmans are in California, as Monica Sherwood: a devout Christian who overwhelms Sam by boldly appointing herself as his girlfriend, finding him both a crush-worthy exotic — being Jewish — and therefore a soul who needs to be saved.
Julia Butters and Keeley Karsten have telling moments as Reggie and Natalie, the eldest of Sammy’s three young sisters: the former strong, emotional and something of a family caretaker; the latter smart, stubborn and opinionated (like her grandmother Hadassah).
David Lynch has a hilarious, spot-on cameo as an influential real-world individual toward the end of the final act, whose identity shall not be revealed here.
Production designer Rick Carter, an Academy Award winner for Avatar and Lincoln, has worked with Spielberg on 11 films. The bulk of this one takes place in the three Fabelman homes, representing the story’s three distinct acts, and which therefore are designed to augment Sammy’s psychological, emotional, moral and artistic development.
The New Jersey home is imaginatively illuminated, cozy and rustic, with numerous nooks and crannies, and basic furnishing clearly passed on from earlier generations. The elongated, ranch-style Phoenix home is festooned with bright, airy desert hues and the turquoise “space age” shade popular in the 1950s and early ’60s. The Los Gatos Craftsman home, unexpectedly, is gloomy and spare, its clutter of unpacked moving boxes further reflecting transition and the story’s darkening mood.
John Williams’ spare score relies mostly on haunting, well-placed solo piano themes: a further reflection of the career Mitzi was denied.
The Fabelmans clearly is near and dear to Spielberg’s heart, and reflects close, uncredited collaboration with his sisters Ann, Sue and Nancy. The result is both a deeply touching emotional journey, and a glimpse of what it must have been like for him as a young man, so consumed by this gift he chose to embrace so boldly.
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