Robert Koelle’s review published on Letterboxd:
The Fabelmans is a gauzy look back for Spielberg to his childhood. The two years featured are his discovery of film magic at about 8, when he attends his first film, and in high school, when he's become perhaps the greatest silent home movie aficionado of all time. The film is balanced between displaying Sammy's development as a young DeMille, and his unusual family's disintegration.
Sammy watches The Greatest Show On Earth with initial trepidation, then utter fascination. He gets a model train set for Hanukkah right after, and uses his dad's 8mm camera to restage a train crash from the movie, with some skill. He specifically positions his camera to hazardous POVs, with the train rushing right at the screen, for instance.
His dad Burt is an engineer in the growing field of computing, with his best friend Bennie as his professional partner. He wants to push the field further than his employer, so he changes jobs, moving the family to Phoenix, AZ. Bennie goes with them. His mother Mitzi, who approved of Sammy's train carnage in the name of art, is a talented pianist, and has a flighty personality intended to illustrate an artistic Anschauung.
While in Phoenix, Sammy's involvement with Scouting leads him to more elaborate filmmaking. His fellow Scouts are enthusiastic participants in a World War II battle epic. One of them is even moved beyond expectation when asked to walk among the bodies of his fallen comrades. Sammy is even using sophisticated effects, like squibs and other small, times bullet pyrotechnics. Both parents are moved, and Burt is genuinely impressed by the engineering feat the films represent. But he also sees this as a teenage hobby, with little future beyond that.
There's a weird scene with Mitzi's uncle Boris, who visits the family after Mitzi's mother dies. She dreads his arrival. He's a very loud, demonstrative guy, at odds with the almost WASPy demeanor of the Fabelmans. Boris senses the underlying tension in the house, and advises Sammy that his movie art will drive the parents further apart.
But there's something else really causing a problem. Bennie and Mitzi are closer than they should be, and Sammy even gets their private moments on film, inadvertantly, during a family camping trip. He confronts Mitzi with the evidence, after having a loud argument with her, when she actually slaps him so hard she leaves a mark on his back. This is the beginning of the end for the family. They move again to California, this time without Bennie, and Mitzi is distraught. Sammy also has to face anti-semitism for the first time, at his new high school. I found that interesting - Northern California was less tolerant than Phoenix?
The film gets its first broadly comic moment when a weirdly devout Catholic girl is engrossed by his Jewishness, and tries to convert him through seduction. Then Sammy gets the opportunity to use his filmmaking to stand out among the bullies. During Senior Ditch Day at the beach, he films everyone, but focuses particularly on a Tab Hunter lookalike named Logan who tormented him, and makes him look like Adonis, which confuses and upsets the antagonizer. Why would Sammy do that? Will Sammy ever tell anyone about Logan's emotional outburst that only the two of them witnessed? Mebbe.
There's a long denouement, one year after Sammy's graduation, that covers a lot of ground. But it also has one of the most significant short cameos that I can remember, as Sammy meets one of his great film idols. Broadly comic again, but probably accurate. I don't recall many moments when Spielberg called attention to his directing flair. One oedipal took place during the camping trip, as teenage Sammy uses background firelight to film his mother dancing. Mostly I was struck, as he intended, by the parents relationship with Sammy and each other. The point was to illustrate their differences, and the psychological burden that placed on his mother, but frankly I thought their incompatibilities complemented each other. They looked like a happy, quirky family for most of the film. Is Mitzi's attention to Sammy and his talent the reason for their marital problems? That seemed to be the implication for me. Certainly Bennie contributed as well, but who surfaced that issue? Is this a burden that Spielberg has been carrying around for decades, having been the biggest source of contention between his parents?
