Editor's Note: The following review was originally published in-print form, as part of FilmHounds' October/November 2022 Issue
Spielberg is his name, and he's back in the game! For our star cineaste, his oeuvre maintains a delectable cultural resonance. As one of the few remaining working contributors of New Hollywood — who emerged from a wave of young American filmmakers and their unifying radicalisation of the status quo — Spielberg is a man prevalently known for breaking boundaries and testing the limitations of film exhibition. Even after decades past his swan-sung era of endless acclaim, the man still relishes in the practice of an enjoyable spectacle. His newer releases have often fizzled out of the public consciousness due to a lack of critical and financial vigor. Yet, his status still remains synonymous in our long-winded zeitgeist of film-history. We return to the present day. His latest feature entitled The Fabelmans is far from a return to form. An autobiographical film detailing Spielberg's childhood and his subsequent growing pains; the project is a meandering albeit exhilarating exercise on influence and image.
The one notable aspect about the aforementioned production is Spielberg's involvement as a screenwriter. At the Toronto International Film Festival, Spielberg described his collaboration process with Tony Kushner as a form of therapy. The Fabelmans, by structural and thematic design, performs correspondingly as a hazy recollection of memory. In its opening act, the treatment of his text is unfortunately infantilised. Whilst there is a purpose to the film's establishment of familial ties, Spielberg infiltrates his frame with a bizarre preference for cliched melodrama. His film becomes a work of aimless self-narrativisation, as the viewer is forced to cruise through the long-winded inception of a young boy's upbringing with cinema.
It isn't until the unexpected moment when a major tonal shift is sporadically introduced after a prolonged dance-sequence, where Spielberg begins to coyly examine the ramifications of images. The image, told within the context of his own work, quickly unfolds as an unconventional weapon. In a filmography where dinosaurs, aliens, sharks, fascists, and con-men retroactively spotlight the cruelty of their mirrored worlds — the camera itself becomes the next evolutionary step in Spielberg's growing compilation of iconic antagonists. The brownie, as manufactured by Eastman Kodak, no longer asserts the same innocence of a lackadaisical vacation trip. A processed roll of film unveils a different picture. The naivety of a young teen's family life shatters against the complications and responsibility behind his recorded document. Cinema no longer becomes a passage for amusement nor a safe haven for Young Sammy, as murmurs of infidelity are plastered upon his family's image.
Upgrading film-stock in the process, the power of 16mm ensnares the sensitivity of Spielberg's personal encounters with antisemitism. Near the end of the film's resounding finale, one of his school bullies begins to question his own identity — after a singular viewing and acknowledgement of his power within the protagonist's projected documentary. In fear and confusion, the image once again re-contextualises the placement of people. Spielberg understands the responsibility of images, as the film escalates as a detailed anthropological study. In its final sprocketed minutes, The Fabelmans‘ final shot reiterates a familiar theme and a delightful sight gag about the horizon line — a reminder to preserve, to protect, to empathise, and to understand the importance of cinema and the purpose of images within our daily routine.
