The Fabelmans: Spielberg bares his soul

The Fabelmans (2022) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional mild profanity, brief violence and fleeting drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Most films never attempt the breathtaking impact of a truly transformative moment; a lucky few manage one, perhaps two.

 

This film has many.

 

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.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical ode to the relentless drive of artistic passion is gorgeously lensed throughout by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who won Academy Awards while working with Spielberg on Schindler’s Listand Saving Private Ryan. This affectionate big-screen love letter isn’t merely laden with a sense of wonder; it’s about that sense of wonder, which can render those so afflicted helpless in its grip.

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.

Café Society: Order off the menu

Café Society (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content, occasional violence and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang

Once or twice each year, I come across a film whose mere existence is baffling.

They’re not bad, at least not overtly; they’re simply bewildering. We endure them for somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, and then the lights come up, and we frown at each other with the same unspoken question: Is that it? Seriously?

It's love at first sight, at least for Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), when Vonnie (Kristen Stewart)
agrees to show him all the wonders of Hollywood's film colony. Alas, the course of true
love never is steady in a Woody Allen film.

And why, precisely? What was the point?

Woody Allen’s newest is just such a film.

The package is attractively wrapped: Production designer Santo Loquasto transports us back to 1930s New York and Hollywood with an opulent level of verisimilitude. The actors are luxuriously garbed by costume designer Suzy Benzinger, every member of the large ensemble cast well selected for each part.

Allen supplies narration throughout the film, often with the same passionate, poetic devotion that he displayed for the Big Apple in 1979’s Manhattan. The various characters seem reasonably interesting, the story’s unusual romantic triangle an intriguing hook on which to hang what we expect will be an homage to Golden Age cinematic classics.

Doesn’t work out that way.

Café Society is a textbook case of a movie being all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I’ve no idea what Allen intended us to gather from his bizarrely random script, unless it’s the oft-stated cliché that people are remarkably adept at screwing up their own lives. But even that doesn’t seem quite right, because several of these characters do get their heart’s desire.

With an oeuvre as lengthy and varied as Allen’s, we tend to categorize each new film on the basis of its many predecessors; this one feels like a clumsy blend of Crime and Misdemeanors and Radio Days, if the latter’s young protagonist were half a generation older. That’s a rather unholy mash-up, to say the least, and Allen doesn’t do anything remotely interesting with it.

Café Society also is burdened with far too many sidebar characters, many of whom don’t get the attention they deserve. Their various side issues don’t integrate well with the core narrative, leaving us to wonder why they were included in the first place.

The storyline, more or less:

Bronx-born Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), not satisfied with joining his father’s jewelry business, decamps for the much more exciting life he imagines awaits on the opposite coast, in Hollywood. Bobby has an entry of sorts: his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a high-powered agent who drops famous names, like adjectives, into every spoken sentence.

At first blush, Phil seems a superficial, puffed-up phony who merely talks a great show, but no; turns out he really does know and represent everybody from Errol Flynn to Judy Garland. Even so, he’s too self-obsessed to waste much time with a nephew, and so hires Bobby as a glorified gopher and assigns his secretary/assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), to look after the kid.