Spielberg‘s film THE FABELMANS is one of the most private and autobiographical, perhaps also most neurotic, Hollywood flashbacks that have come out in cinemas recently and one of the key films for the director‘s career.

It all begins with a little boy, Sammy Fabelman, who goes to the cinema with his parents for the first time and is afraid of the dark of the cinema auditorium. The parents can convince him and then he sits with an open mouth and the typical “Spielberg Face“ (Kevin E. Lee) as if he‘s hypnotized by the screen, watching a scene from the film THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (Cecile B. DeMille, 1952). A train crash with a car caught in the tracks. The family buys a super 8 camera, Sammy wishes for a train set and reenacts the accident. He shows a natural understanding for film language. Mother Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams), an ex-pianist, immediately recognizes Sammy‘s talent. Father Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano), an engineer, is interested in the technical aspects and doesn‘t view Sammy‘s hobby as especially meaningful. Two key scenes in the film change Spielberg‘s understanding of cinema: Sammy discovers film material that he shot during a family camping trip in which his mother is too close to his father‘s best friend. He cuts the material in an exposing way before showing it to his mother. Film as a tool for (private) truth seeking. The second key scene: Sammy films his school bully, an anti-Semitic bully, as a radiant hero in a film about a school trip. Film as a defense from trauma and violence. A cameo by David Lynch, who plays John Ford in an reenactment of a Spielberg anecdote, is the cherry on top.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy