Steven Spielberg
The Fabelmans

The greatness of the film (Spielberg's latest, for now) can be summed up in the last five minutes: young Steven is at CBS, where he's just been signed to direct a television project about which little is known (though much will be revealed, as it's about Lieutenant Columbo). Here, he randomly comes into contact with the now-octogenarian John Ford (who will soon pass away), his lifelong idol. It's worth noting that John Ford is played by David Lynch, all glory to his soul. The old Ford imparts a lesson in perspective and communication to young Steven, using the horizon line as a metaphor. These five minutes are among the pinnacles of Spielbergian thought, and thus of cinema.

The film of a lifetime, the one you'd always wanted to make, but doing it at 75 is priceless because you've been through so much. "The Fabelmans" is Spielberg's story, his autobiography. He changes the names (Sammy/Steven; Fabelmans/Spielberg), but the essence is the same. After watching Cecil B. De Mille's "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952) (which also has an Italian remake, "Il più comico spettacolo del mondo," 1953, with Totò in the lead), nothing is the same for young Sammy, the son of a father as brilliant as he is absent and a mother showing clear signs of madness. He studies, but cinema never leaves him, and he gets creative with his school friends, directing and editing small amateur western films. He grows up and goes to college, where he experiences antisemitism, but falls in love with a zealously religious girl, until the day he receives the long-awaited news: a summons to CBS. In between are a host of events: discovering, through a microfilm, his mother's infidelity; his parents' separation; getting beaten up at college.

The idea is at least 25 years old. Spielberg has been considering a film about his life since 1999, but the risk of self-celebration lurks around the corner, so every effort must be made to avoid it. The title was thought up immediately: "I'll Be Home." Moreover, Spielberg had doubts, which he expressed years later in an interview:

"My great fear was that my mom and dad wouldn’t like it and they’d think it was an insult and they wouldn’t share my loving but critical view of what it was like growing up with them."

The idea resurfaced in 2002 but was quickly shelved in favor of "Catch Me If You Can" and other projects that would later become "War of the Worlds" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (not exactly, the last two, among his acclaimed masterpieces), until in 2021, the idea took shape. All happened coincidentally, you might say, due to his last films, "Ready Player One" (2017) and, especially, "The Post" (2017), works he cared about a lot but which proved modest at the box office. Until the flop (undeserved, in my opinion) of the "West Side Story" (2021) remake. With the cast completed, work began.

The film is a great film, cinema made impeccably (or almost so) by a director using cinematic techniques to the fullest of their expressiveness. Praiseworthy is the immediate immersion into the Fabelmans' world, with their Jewish rites and tradition placed, more or less, in the foreground. The film, which does not result in a banal self-celebration, is a mosaic of climactic scenes, one ending while another immediately begins, all filtered through the camera's eye. Sammy sees everything from there; his life is obsessively intertwined with a lens as if there were a filter capable of merging reality and fiction. Furthermore, the work is quite lengthy (151') without ever boring the viewer: the tension remains high, each major sequence containing various interesting narrative cues (the entire college segment is a sophisticated mix of laugh-out-loud moments and drama), and, even when it forcefully leans towards the epic (the mother dancing half-naked at the campfire at night), it is devoid of any rhetoric, something that, in certain cases, often occurred in Spielberg's world. Perhaps some passages are unclear (the emphatic and ultimately useless intervention of Uncle Boris), yet it boasts a formidable cast, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano above all.

The music by the ever-great John Williams is a guarantee, as is the stunning pastel-toned cinematography of the indefatigable Janusz Kamiński, especially shining in the sequences of Sammy's childhood (the '50s). The man of tales has, once more, hit the mark, this time telling his story firsthand, hiding nothing, not even sugar-coating the mother's mental dysfunctions or the father's selfishness more directed towards his professional horizons than familial love.

Satisfied box office? No. If it held its own excellently in Italy (thanks to a timely Christmas release), the rest of the world, especially the USA, turned its back, once more, on Spielberg, the somewhat worn-out King Midas. Variety is merciless, but it's factual: "a disappointing result for a 40-million-dollar film, especially for the most successful director of his time." Critics are divided but lean towards sufficiency, and so it goes today. Mala tempora currunt, now even Spielberg is paying the price. Yet I believe "The Fabelmans" is a film of exquisite craftsmanship. Davide Stanzione (Best Movie) knows:

"The Fabelmans is prodigious: Steven Spielberg’s celluloid autobiography is a miraculous coming-of-age tale for its clarity and emotion, with a love for cinema meant to gently temper all the anger and regrets, to enchant repeatedly, to give meaning and shape the dreams and family affections in the light of the Myth, to touch everything with tears."

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