The Fabelmans

In the past ten years, I really haven't been doing a great job keeping up with Steven Spielberg's latest releases and I'm not too sure why. Bridge of Lies was a fine enough film while Ready Player One left me with a headache and didn't quite come together as well as I would have expected. Then there are the others which passed me by with The BFG, The Post and West Side Story which seemed to have all received generally good reviews but I haven't found myself feeling the pull to see the latest offerings from one of my favourite directors. But I wanted to buck this trend and make time for The Fabelmans which released in 2022 and is more or less a self-biography of Spielberg's childhood but under the guise of different names.

The story follows Sammy Fabelman in the late 1950s and early 1960s as he grows-up in a ordinary Jewish home with two parents and two sisters. A trip early in his childhood to the cinema lights a creative spark in him to tell big and exciting stories but tensions in the household provoke him to explore more personal stories as he starts to use his passion as a means of escape. 

I went into this with some tempered expectations, the idea of a film idolising or preaching the magic of cinema has always felt off-putting to me, but Spielberg successfully manages to convey an engrossing story across two and a half hours that carefully straddles the line of not becoming too schmaltzy. There are one or two moments where he does tip over into this territory but for the most part it is a great drama with a terrific cast if you give it time.

There's no doubt in my mind that The Fabelmans will have a limited reach, as reflected by its box office results, but any fan of the director will find something to enjoy as will general viewers. I wouldn't call this one of Spielberg's best but it is great he is in the position to tell his story like this and does so in a way that I found satisfying even with a hefty running time. You may only want to watch this once but it is a film I can happily recommend to anyone interested.