Movie Review: The Fabelmans

I am gearing up for the Oscars Awards on Sunday and so I am watching some of the movies to prepare for the award show. It seemed so far away but I honestly cannot believe it is coming up this Sunday already. Time flies.

Yesterday I watched a wonderful movie called The Fabelmans. I had heard so much about it and I remember watching Steven Spielberg’s speech on the movie at the Golden Globes and how moving it was. I saw the trailer and it looked really good, so I decided to watch it. I have seen a few Steven Spielberg movies, but most of them are his recent ones (I had to go on his Wikipedia page to read about his filmography) such as the remake of West Side Story, Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, and The Post but I haven’t seen Jurassic Park, E.T. or his older films. But watching this movie, The Fabelmans, gave me a deeper appreciation for the work he has done in film and the magic of film in general. It actually served as a reminder why I love movies so much. As a kid I was always watching movies. Maybe not PG-13 or R rated films but still my family and I were always going to the movie theaters and even during the pandemic I watched so many movies (T.G.F.S., Thank Goodness for Streaming). For the past few years after seeing so many movies and writing about them, I have become more interested in the behind-the-scenes process of filmmaking. I used to focus on just the acting and the storyline, but when I made time after the film to sit and watch the end credits roll, I began to gradually appreciate how many people work behind the scenes before, during and after the film’s production. I began to read more about cinematography, film scoring, makeup and costumes. I used to only pay attention to the cast members of the movie, but there is so much that goes into making a film, and The Fabelmans showed me that.

For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie based on Spielberg’s life. The movie opens up in the 1950s, in New Jersey, and Sammy Fabelman is out with his parents Mitzi and Burt and his sibilings to see a movie called The Greatest Show on Earth. Even though Sammy is young, he is deeply fascinated with the movie, even though it shows a lot of violent upsetting scenes (for the 1950s, it was tame compared to 90 percent of the stuff today) where people get killed by trains and the trains derail and explode. Unlike his siblings, though, the movie stays with Sammy, and when his parents get him a train set he recreates the movie using the train set and a camera that his mom uses to record the movie. He spends so much time recreating the movie, and his parents see his early passion for film blossoming. Meanwhile, his parents have to deal with their marriage falling apart and Mitzi’s mental health suffers after the death of her mother. As Sammy grows up, he faces more challenges, including his dad not taking his filmmaking seriously, his parents’ crumbling marriage, and anti-Semitism at school. Sammy and his siblings are the only Jewish students at their school and Sammy faces a ton of anti-Semitism from the school jocks. However, Sammy has a passion for film and so he uses his passion for film to escape the pain of growing up and his family troubles. He meets a Christian girl named Monica who really likes him and tries to get him to become a Christian, but they end up parting ways after he proposes they marry and move to Los Angeles (she is going to Texas A & M). Even though they didn’t end up together, I think they needed to go their separate paths because Sammy really wanted to make movies and I don’t know if he could have compromised his dreams. Monica also didn’t want to compromise her dreams of going to college in Texas.

There was a pretty poignant moment during the prom after Monica rejects Sammy’s proposal to marry her. Logan, the school jock who bullied him, ends up confronting Sammy in the hallway, because the film Sammy made portrayed him as being this tanned perfect hero when deep down inside he doesn’t feel like that at all. He confesses to Sammy that he feels less than and feels embarrassed that Sam made him look like that in the movie because he struggles with incredibly low self-worth. Even though Sammy and Logan don’t end up friends, it was still telling that Logan was so vulnerable with Sam about his low self-worth and how even though he is popular, he is still insecure. Reading Brene Brown’s books on vulnerability and shame helped me appreciate this scene because it showed me that even though Logan picked on Sammy, he was probably grappling with a lot of his own hurt and pain, but since there were probably few to no positive mentors or mental health discussions back in the 1960s, the kids were taught they had to just deal with their pain by internalizing it and not talking about it to a trusted adult. I’m glad Spielberg showed this because kids, especially young men, aren’t just randomly cruel; they’re taught to be cruel by societal expectations.

Another really powerful scene is when Sammy meets John Ford, a famous film director, at the end of the movie. He is really nervous because he loves films and he is going to meet this guy and this guy is going to encourage him, but the director gives him very short but blunt advice and tells him to look at these paintings around the room. I think what this movie reminded me of is this letter I read in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin called “The Eight Winds,” which explains the concept of the eight winds, which are influences that people can easily be swayed by. The four favorable winds are prosperity, pleasure, praise and honor, while the four adverse winds are decline, disgrace, censure and suffering. In an earlier scene, Sammy’s great-uncle Boris, who used to be a lion tamer and also worked on films, visits the Fabelmans’ house. He talks with Sammy about his time working in entertainment and sees Sam’s movie equipment, and that Sammy is editing some movie footage he shot during him and his family’s camping trip. Sammy’s father urges him to make the movie about the camping trip, but Sam says he is shooting a movie with his friends and doesn’t have time, but Burt tells him to do it for his mom, especially because her mom just passed away. It takes Boris to finally convince Sammy to make the movie. Boris tells him that if he wants to make art, he should really start with where he is at, which is with the camping trip footage. It’s a very down-to-earth exchange and it reminded me that when making art it’s okay to have big ideas but you need to start with what you’ve got instead of focusing on becoming big and famous because success is not an overnight thing and it can’t come at the expense of daily life. Sammy wanted to escape into his filmmaking, but he also had to deal with daily life and couldn’t run away from his family or the struggles of daily life, so it’s like Boris was telling him that yes, he should keep making art, but to understand that it is going to be a long-term struggle and he can’t expect immediate success.

Throughout the film, Sammy meets people who serve as protective functions for his filmmaking career each time he wants to give up. Bennie, who is the Fabelmans’ family friend, has an affair with Mitzi, and Sammy finds this out while he is making the movie about the camping trip. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth and the family moves from Arizona to California, leaving Bennie behind, but Bennie buys Sammy a film camera at the electronics and film store and at first Sammy doesn’t want Bennie’s gift because he had an affair with Sam’s mom and that really tore their family apart, but Bennie insists that Sam not give up on filmmaking even if it’s his hobby for a while. Sammy tries to give Bennie cash to pay for the film camera but Bennie tells him to keep the change, and so Sammy has no choice but to keep making movies. Even his girlfriend, Monica, encourages him to make a movie for Ditch Day at school and tells him that her father has an Arriflex camera he can use to shoot the movie. Sammy gets angry with everyone at the table because while Monica encourages him, Burt thinks it’s just a hobby and that Sammy should be getting more serious about his future. Sammy wants everyone to just drop the subject of him making a movie, but it’s like he has no choice but to keep going with filmmaking because deep down it’s what he loves to do. He ends up making the movie with the help of other people, and adds special effects such as using vanilla ice cream to look like bird poop is dropping on the faces of students sun-tanning on the beach. The film ends up being a hit and it’s when Sammy realizes once again that this is his passion and what he loves to do. It was a personal reminder to me to keep making music and writing even if I do it as a hobby for a while. It reminded me that no one ever just starts out “great” and “successful” and for many people their art is their hobby before they make a full-time career out of it. Many people in my life have told me to keep going and not give up in playing music and writing, and I’m deeply appreciative, even at times when I wanted to give up or felt ashamed to tell them whenever I didn’t ace an audition or got a rejection email for an opportunity. Sammy’s journey as a filmmaker was encouraging because it showed me that the most important thing is to just keep making art whether people like it or not. Even if you have day jobs, keep making art. Even if the people in your life praise you for it, keep making art, don’t get complacent. Even if the people in your life don’t like it or you get criticism, keep making art. At the end of the day, Sammy had to gain his own self-confidence and understand that this is what he really wanted him to do. Even his dad Burt came to accept that Sam wanted to make a career out of filmmaking. This movie showed me that a hobby is never just a hobby, and even if you make a career out of your hobby to not get jaded with success or failures, and to always keep going back to your roots so you can stay grounded when navigating the ups and downs of a career in the arts or really any career.

I really appreciate this film, too, because it reminds me that I can’t forget the people who made me who I am today. Steven Spielberg’s film shows how much of an impact the experiences he went through in his childhood and adolescence formed the foundation for his later life and career. His love for movies began when he was young, and even through all the ups and downs that life threw at him he continued making movies, whether he got paid for them or not. This taught me that even if I don’t get paid for my music or writing right away, to keep writing and playing music no matter what. My life has a huge influence on my writing and music, even if I don’t always directly talk about it. Sometimes I think that it’s hard for me to write about myself than it is to write about other people’s work, such as this film review, because it feels so personal and when I’m still going through the struggle, writing about it often brings up painful or uncomfortable unresolved things deep down in my life. When writing the characters I had to push past my own deep insecurities and confront those painful battles with myself because I saw so much of myself in these characters. But this film encouraged me because it showed me that our early experiences often do shape our art and it also has the power to encourage others who are going through similar experiences. As a child I really loved writing. Even now I have an entire bin filled with old journals I have filled out, and not all the entries are long and full of big words and flowery language. Some days I wrote and some days I was too tired to write. Sometimes I would just write about what I had to eat for breakfast or would watch on television. Other days I wrote about my mental health and how it was such a challenging thing to deal with each day. I wrote about love, music, books, everything I could. Sometimes I look back at these journals and it amazes me how much self-growth I have gone through over the past 20-something years of life. Even though I haven’t published a book yet, I still love to write and I have to keep reminding myself that making art isn’t an overnight thing, but rather a process of just making unseen efforts each day.