Movie: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)
I've never been happier to see Greg Grunberg and his shit-eating grin. He is playing a 1960's television executive knowing he can afford a lot of playful indulgence. His industry is rapidly capturing America's hearts, minds and pockets, with no sign of decline, and he has no qualms showing how much he enjoys being part of it. When young upstarts enter his office looking for a way in, he welcomes them with a giddy glint in his eye communicating that they obviously should want to be part of his world. Everything's a win here all the time. It's not necessarily a great idea to throw a talented director-in-waiting into the deep end with an unarranged visit to a legendary curmedgeon, but who cares. At best, the meeting will help the kid become Steven Spielberg. At worst, Grunberg will have a fun anecdote to tell at parties.
Grunberg always loooks as if he is auditioning to be Jimmy Fallon. It's no different here, despite him portraying real-life figure Bernie Fein, a producer of Hogan's Heroes. He does so with barely any sense of period- or character-specific detail, always coming off as his contemporary self. In combination with the brighter and more naturalistic set design and lighting, these scenes are a welcome respite and a clean break from the oppressive gloom of the Fabelmans. In all but name, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) Fabelman are Spielberg's parents and in seeking to recreate his childhood memories, Spielberg has designed everything here to an inch of its life, from the dining room table to Williams' red fingernails. Spielberg has of course made many serious historical dramas before he has always meticulously crafted. However, that craft has always been in the service of both the period he depicted and his own populist instincts, always allowing room for more charismatic characters than the history books would dictate, compellingly ahistoric banter, and directorial flourishes that make even less significant events feel more propulsive. There is very little of that here, with the excpetion of the scenes in which young Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) prepares his films. The process of making early 16mm cameras and editing equipment work, and more generally of setting up the technology that makes filmmaking possible is filmed with the familiar awe-inducing showmanship ordinarily used for aliens, war heroes and adventorous archeologists.
Everything else is rather miserably subdued. The excessive atificiality doesn't just (or even primarily) serve to create an an authentic representation of Spielberg's childhood, but to evoke its rigid environment. Everything and everyone is designed to fit the supposed mores of its time, with no possibility to deviate from it. The performances of Paul Dano and especially Michelle Williams feel odd at first, never feeling as specific characters, until you realise that's the point. Williams is playing an over-the-top archetype of a post-war housewife, because that's all what Mitzi (feels she) can be. She has no ability or possibility to express herself as a individual, repressing her feelings until they reach a boiling point. She is not much helped by her husband who is as well meaning and kind as he can be without ever understanding how his performance of the ideal family man doesn't produce an ideal family. Sammy stuck in between all this, with his artistic sensibilities only being fully understood by his uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch). Casting Hirsch in this context is I think a deliberate and unwise choice to connect the film to Ordinary People, mostly reminding that Redford's film is the superior one. Ordinary People is named that for a reason; it is not just about the troubles of the family at its centre, but also about how those troubles are exacarbated by the family's need to present themselves outwardly as ordinary 'functional' people, while being none of that in the comfort of their own home. Spielberg raises some similar ideas here, but is too obvious and blunt in highlighting how film shapes and distorts reality.
I've liked most of Spielberg's films I've seen, but he has never been one of my favorites (E.T. was the first time I've been disappointed by a supposed classic). It's a fair critcism I think that many of his movies have sentimentalised endings working a bit too hard to signal profundity without achieving it. The Fabelmans suffers from the inverse. By now, even those with just a cursory interest in film will know a little bit of what Grunberg's scenes set up. David Lynch playing John Ford in a film about Steven Spielberg's youth is fan service and treated as such. Spielberg and Lynch put on a show capped by the wonderful final shot correcting itself to heed Ford's advice. The scene leans in to all three directors' most beloved sensibilities and character tics, but reminded me most of the Coen Brothers. They may as well have trademarked these kinds of depictions of unaccomplished plebs seeking wisdom from a seasoned figure of authority. The first challenge to overcome is always the stoic, over-it secretary; if they pass that test they can face the Great Man, whose supposed wisdom is always overshadowed by an obvious grotesque ridiculousness. Here Lynch is shown bleeding without explanation from unexpected places, and giving a gross stained tissue to his secretary as if it's the most usual thing in the world. In his meeting with Sammy he treats young Spielberg more as a figure of his imagination than as a full conversation partner. It's a very fun scene whose irreverent approach to depicting powerful figures is worth appreciating even more knowing that Steven Spielberg is currently in John Ford's position.
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