The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

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Harvest
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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#26 Post by Harvest » Sun Sep 18, 2022 12:45 pm

Won the People's Choice audience award at TIFF.

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Computer Raheem
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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#27 Post by Computer Raheem » Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:12 pm

Harvest wrote:
Sun Sep 18, 2022 12:45 pm
Won the People's Choice audience award at TIFF.
Incoming Best Picture win for this one, I'm calling it now

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#28 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:16 pm

…Gold Derby has had it pegged as the presumed winner for the last six months

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#29 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:23 pm

I just realized that the title is referencing Spielberg’s creative liberties to his autobiography to concoct a fable. He just switched the last two letters of “fable” to throw people off. Brilliant

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#30 Post by captveg » Mon Sep 19, 2022 5:03 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:16 pm
…Gold Derby has had it pegged as the presumed winner for the last six months
This seems accurate considering the presumed competition, but I feel Williams is an even stronger presumed Winner.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#31 Post by domino harvey » Wed Oct 19, 2022 12:19 pm

Apparently Williams is running in Lead, going from presumed winner in Supporting to a distant third behind Blanchett and Yeoh. Who advised her on this?

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#32 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:33 am

Saw a preview screening tonight. Kind of a mixed bag, I wasn't really a fan, but the stranger and more unsettling aspects of it made it interesting.

Parts of it played out my worst fears from the trailer - stylistically there were moments that weren't departures from Spielberg's visual style, but they felt more off-putting when applied to himself. A lot of ideas were done in very broad strokes which made them feel less substantial. It's also weird how the opening scenes has someone who looks either like a kewpie doll or a young Haley Joel Osment playing Sam Fabelman. (Fortunately once we get past those scenes, the teenage Sam is played by someone who looks like a dead ringer for Spielberg.)

Regardless, overall it did feel like a film that had a lot to say about Spielberg as a filmmaker. That's expected given it's his life story, but I think it goes beyond the details of his upbringing, for reasons good and bad. As Sam develops as a filmmaking teenager, he's basically making vacuous, technically accomplished action movies (even when he's trying to get an actor to react with grief), which makes sense - again he's only a teenager, and at this point, his character is pretty bland with a knack for complicated special effects thanks to his father.

But we also see a growing sense of responsibility of what he could be doing with his skills (beginning with one request from his father), and they do explore what else his work can mean for himself and for other people beyond the usual gawking close-ups - not as much as I'd hope but it's there. In other words, you do get a sense of how a filmmaker with popcorn instincts develops the ambition to be an artist or at least do more than what he's been capable of, and the catalyst for this development comes from the way he's been traumatized from his home life.

I didn't really know all that much about Spielberg's history, but FWIW, the actor who portrays him said that everything in the film did happen to Spielberg. I get the impression there wasn't room for interpretation from Williams which is understandable - she was probably delivering on a very precise and detailed depiction that Spielberg had in mind, but while this may be unsurprising, I wonder if it loses something by not allowing an outsider to see things differently, ideas or interpretations that wouldn't come to mind to someone who's so close to the material. I actually went with a friend who's a psychologist and they thought the mother was a bipolar narcissist. (At one point, she even seemed like a potential schizophrenic.) I didn't disagree with that, but there was something uneasy about the way that registered in the film. I wish I could say this was intentional, that maybe this was a reflection of an era where those kind of things were not fully understood in people, but I don't feel like it came off that way. (At one point, there's even a throwaway joke about therapy.) There were a lot of things like that, where I had to think "if I was at a friend's house and this played out, this would seem pretty off." For example, the way the women were handled in the film felt kind of off - again, a different era so maybe it's more of a reflection of that, but regardless the details seemed to pile up from the way the mother was literally handled in the nails scene, to the way the mother's own daughters talked to her or treated her, etc.

All of these things suggest elements that have turned up in Spielberg's other films as well. This creates some kind of circular concept where you could say we're seeing the roots of these elements in Spielberg's youth, but it could also be the adult Spielberg simply interpreting his youth in this manner. It's an interesting idea, but I also wonder if it suggests a film that's so self-involved that it doesn't have much to say about what's relevant beyond a viewer's curiosity about Spielberg. I've been thinking about other semi-autobiographical films like Distant Voices, Still Lives or The 400 Blows and they have a lot to say about memory, childhood, etc. that's very edifying and universal. I'm not sure I can say the same about The Fabelmans.

EDIT: Just saw this tweet from Ty Burr. For those who avoid Twitter, he said: "Was talking with a friend whose mother was bipolar and she was very uncomfortable with the way she felt the movie romanticized mental illness." I'm pretty much in agreement, and this seems to happen a lot with Spielberg where he evades a difficult reality or at least the implications of it and either fabricates a simpler, rosier one or just goes go into complete denial about what's there. It brings to mind Art Spiegelman's use of the Passover Haggadah to illustrate his problem with Spielberg's work.

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Matt
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The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#33 Post by Matt » Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:19 am

Image
Last edited by Matt on Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Harvest
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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#34 Post by Harvest » Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:10 pm

Matt wrote:
Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:19 am
Harvest wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 2:17 am
Matt wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 12:43 am
Oh riiiight, you’re that guy.
It's already been compared to LP in quite a few reviews I've read. Apparently it's also a "memory piece" and similar in episodic structure and somewhat meandering tone. This seems much more personal and direct though so I bet it's going to be much more effective IMO.
Boy would my face be red if there was some kind of conversation between Spielberg and PTA about similarities in their backgrounds and these two films.
Boy would my face be red if the person I thought I was dunking on already listened to that and knew that there wasn't much of what I'm describing actually being discussed. Remind me again where in the conversation PTA's background is talked about and when Licorice Pizza is even mentioned once?

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#35 Post by Matt » Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:23 pm

Boy would my face be red if I ever posted a link without actually reading or listening to the content

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#36 Post by ford » Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:26 am

None of your faces are red because no one can see your faces because this is a forum on the internet.

You’re welcome.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#37 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 14, 2022 12:44 pm

I found this to be a major disappointment. The film starts out strong with a short first act exhibiting the child-eyed wonder in discovery of passion, and in a vacuum this segment is close to Spielberg’s best work. He very effectively captures the perspective of a kid acclimating to a world of possibility, and I wish this section was longer. Unfortunately, the pivot into teenage Spielberg that proceeds to dominate the remainder of the narrative is as close to ‘bad filmmaking’ as he’s shown in his career. It plays out as uninspired, overly melodramatic, and hackneyed rather than deeply personal, and not in a kind of self-reflexive ‘only in the movies can I achieve a sense of catharsis in holding onto moments’ way, though that’s certainly a part of his intent. I just don’t buy that he's wielding this kind of philosophy in a climactic scene with a bully (one of the most embarrassingly straight-played scenes I've witnessed in a film in a long, long time) or conflict with his love interest or the family drama just before that, as least not in any deliberate way, which it demands in order to work on these terms. Instead, the film caves in on itself. Themes of control don’t really gel with the mode in which Spielberg controls his vision of the past, because it’s so clearly skewed in memory mixed with an awareness of that control yet the themes are thinly drawn so that metaphysical aspect just peters out every time we’re cued into its significance. Spielberg unsuccessfully tries to be both episodic and fluid - he's not going for Licorice Pizza, but it's not entirely clear what he 'is' going for, which is part of the problem, and not because this is some hazy concoction of select memories. It's too lucid for that, too defined on the exterior, and yet undefined in the purpose of this approach, especially as a linear narrative of development playing in a sandbox of inherently nonlinear social-emotional responses to rich family dynamics.

It's hard to stomach Spielberg taking home the directing trophy for a film that doesn’t do anything special for the majority of its duration (aside from that wonderful opening and the fun films Spielberg re-shot from memory that his younger-self makes, thankfully shown in either their entirety or with generous space, giving us a break from the rest of the vapid trip down memory lane). The end is fun, but that's solely thanks to a cameo that's already been spoiled. I went into this more-or-less expecting a candy-coated Spielbergian autobiography, and that's kinda what we get, but I respect and understand Spielberg enough as a filmmaker (at least I thought I did, I have seen all his works, including TV films etc. only available on back channels!) where I expected more virtuoso direction and affecting themes tied together more firmly. He's always been reliable to give us something beautifully simplified that simultaneously recognizes that the crystallized emotions bursting through on the surface are connected to worn, complex feelings people grapple with underneath. I didn't think this film really did that- and instead attempted to simplify those complexities within the family system and our relationships to them while also allowing them to remain complicated during a few moments (mostly with his father's impotence to understand or hold onto certain aspects of his life).

I don't think it's really fair how Spielberg has his cake and its it too here- for the face-value simplicity reads as too sincere to meld with the enigmatic. In supplanting his current maturity onto his teenage self, Spielberg applies a problematic tactic, that deserves both a yawn and frustration for delusionally implying this is developmentally appropriate to achieve. If there was a shred of self-consciousness to suggest that Spielberg is knowingly doing this -giving his younger self his current goggles by which to engage with his mother as he wished he could, etc.- that would work, but that's not what's happening here. So it's a worst-case-scenario for Spielberg, taking his style that's pulsating with the potential for realising 'possibility' (just like the movies, and the inspired eyes of the little boy version of him at the start of the picture) and wringing it of all of that to deliver something trite and ignorant, ironically while being so deeply personal to him. The film took on the opposite effect of its intent: As we watch Spielberg grow up in the film, he and the events and the social relationships and emotional complexity, becomes dulled, rote, thinner, less detailed or rich - on their way to adopting his dad's myopic mentality. I don't think that's what he was going for.
hearthesilence wrote:
Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:33 am
EDIT: Just saw this tweet from Ty Burr. For those who avoid Twitter, he said: "Was talking with a friend whose mother was bipolar and she was very uncomfortable with the way she felt the movie romanticized mental illness." I'm pretty much in agreement, and this seems to happen a lot with Spielberg where he evades a difficult reality or at least the implications of it and either fabricates a simpler, rosier one or just goes go into complete denial about what's there. It brings to mind Art Spiegelman's use of the Passover Haggadah to illustrate his problem with Spielberg's work.
I didn't really think about this, but there's probably something there- though I didn't think it was "romanticized" exactly. Rather, I think that Spielberg took some of his mother's words of wisdom at face value and this doesn't fit with the complex feelings he rightly has towards her, especially when these later scenes of reconciliation play out like Spielberg's 'growth' equaling being able to overcome those frustrations to see the lucid truths she's speaking. That's just not how life works, and felt a bit offensive for how it's communicated. Michelle Williams might win because she’s due, but I don’t think her performance is anything special. This will definitely win best picture though.
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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#38 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Dec 14, 2022 12:58 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Fri Nov 11, 2022 2:33 am
Kind of a mixed bag, I wasn't really a fan, but the stranger and more unsettling aspects of it made it interesting.
Pretty much agree with this sentiment; there are suggestions of the more poisonous aspects of obsessive passion and hints at Spielberg's own self-doubt and uncertainty about why he does what he does, but there are also long stretches that are fairly standard coming-of-age, family dysfunction dramatics that are involving enough in the moment but not surprising or thorny enough to stick. From the eerie phone call Michelle Williams takes through Judd Hirsch's brief but brilliant appearance, there are seeds planted regarding the darker complications of being an artist in general and making films in particular that I would have loved to see blossom, but Spielberg seems content to limit them to implications and cast a broader but shallower view on other aspects of this relatively narrow window of his life.
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Obviously his parents' divorce has been a recurring thematic undercurrent in much of his work, and the fact that the ties between his chosen profession and his family's fracturing are more direct and strong than he had previously ever let on is rich with possibility, but I don't think he has the distance, even with Kushner's help, to be able to explore the implications of this to an extent that would be psychologically revealing or narratively compelling enough to make a film like this fully work.
To give him credit, I think for the most part he appropriately restrains himself on the stylistic front, with only maybe the tornado scene feeling like it was a bit much. There are also plenty of knowing nods to his own future and cute moments like the final shot, but in line with much of the rest of his work, I think for something like this to have a more prominent place in his filmography — or even among the other autobiographical directorial efforts of this year — he might have had to dig deeper and with more clarity than he's willing.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#39 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:04 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 12:44 pm
... where I expected more virtuoso direction and affecting themes tied together more firmly. He's always been reliable to give us something beautifully simplified that simultaneously recognizes the lucid emotions bursting on the surface are connected to complex feelings people grapple with underneath.
As I mentioned, I thought his formal restraint was one of the more commendable aspects of the film, but I agree with the second part of what you've expressed; for once, he very gently gathers compelling threads (alongside some more prosaic and familiar) rather than tugging on them for all they're worth.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#40 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:35 pm

Yeah I would've been fine with the restraint in and of itself, and was glad he didn't apply technical prowess to the chamber drama of his family conflict, but it felt lost and oversimplified without the implicitly acknowledged complexities present in his other work rather than 'admirably restrained', and that seemed problematic. And I'm sorry, but nothing felt restrained or "gentle" about the three back-to-back egregiously histrionic scenes of the family conflict eruption of emotion->prom GF conflict->bully catharsis. I struggled to believe it wasn't a joke, but it was pitched too sincerely for ambiguity there. To me, these moments (as well as the ultimate catharsis with his mother, and many other scenes) absolutely read as "tugging on them for all they're worth" just without the substance he usually takes the time to plant in order to defend such tactics. I know there's a fine line between interpreting restraint as positive and welcome when it recognizes complexities existing beyond our tangible reach, and laziness or risk-aversion (or, ironically, aversion to be truly introspective, as a defense mechanism to develop an oversimplified narrative about one's life while also trying to therapeutically express the honest experience of our narrative) that leads to derivative or reductive or empty results- but I definitely read this to be the latter.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#41 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:01 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:35 pm
…risk-aversion (or, ironically, aversion to be truly introspective, as a defense mechanism to develop an oversimplified narrative about one's life while also trying to therapeutically express the honest experience of our narrative) that leads to derivative or reductive or empty results- but I definitely read this to be the latter.
Yeah, I think we’re in basically the same place on this.

I probably wasn’t as bothered by the scenes you point out as egregious because I don’t share your positivity about a lot of his other work, especially this century — those moments felt to varying degrees like the Spielberg I expect, not like significant deviations from the norm.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#42 Post by The Narrator Returns » Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:06 pm

I have my problems with Fabelmans but I must confess I don't understand how the prom scene and specifically the material surrounding the Ditch Day movie is avoiding introspection or indulging in easy histrionics. I don't think I've ever seen a sequence like that in a Spielberg movie before (and if I had, it was only in something as aggressively off-putting as A.I.), I saw no cues of how to emotionally process anything that happens in it and was instead left to sit in Sam/Spielberg's tangled emotions for an extraordinary length of time.
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The final note with the bully is the closest it comes to a traditional emotional moment (though Gabriel LaBelle's exhausted performance cuts off the sentimentality at the knees) but the point is how uncomfortably it and the bully's unearthed insecurities stand next to Sam's movie, a Leni Riefenstahl-quoting celebration of his Aryan classmates. None of this is said out loud but I couldn't mistake even the ostensibly cheerful surface as an uncritical celebration of moviemaking or Spielberg's process, especially once the bully calls into question Spielberg's later role in propagating harmful "man's man" stereotypes.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#43 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:09 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:01 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:35 pm
…risk-aversion (or, ironically, aversion to be truly introspective, as a defense mechanism to develop an oversimplified narrative about one's life while also trying to therapeutically express the honest experience of our narrative) that leads to derivative or reductive or empty results- but I definitely read this to be the latter.
Yeah, I think we’re in basically the same place on this.

I probably wasn’t as bothered by the scenes you point out as egregious because I don’t share your positivity about a lot of his other work, especially this century — those moments felt to varying degrees like the Spielberg I expect, not like significant deviations from the norm.
To be clearer, I went into this with a lot of skepticism too, and I agree that he's done this before to varying degrees of substance and vacuity. This didn't bother me more because I don't recognize his flaws, but because he's attempting to make something more earnest and personal and raw than ever before, and yet filters it all through the same anti-substance shtick seemingly without cognizance. Because I know that he can go to these places with a deeper internal logic acknowledged and implied, it's all the more frustrating to see him shed those abilities as he grows in age and supposed-maturity, and then sell regression as the opposite: documentation of his growth and maturity and willingness to go places he's not actually going to

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#44 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 14, 2022 4:18 pm

To say this all another way in reference to the film's own metaphorical denouement, Spielberg is telling us that he embraces an ethos of not putting the horizon in the middle but he's doing just that in practice, and it's tough to give him leeway when this cognitive dissonance is so blatant as he crafts a clichéd product pitched as original. And, moreover, it's not even a real horizon (raw exploration of personal history), but a fake one on a soundstage, which Spielberg is inexplicably unaware of and flaunting as deep, making it doubly unforgivable. So, in the words of his own skewed memory of John Ford, it's "boring as shit."

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#45 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Dec 14, 2022 4:25 pm

The Narrator Returns wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:06 pm
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The final note with the bully is the closest it comes to a traditional emotional moment (though Gabriel LaBelle's exhausted performance cuts off the sentimentality at the knees) but the point is how uncomfortably it and the bully's unearthed insecurities stand next to Sam's movie, a Leni Riefenstahl-quoting celebration of his Aryan classmates. None of this is said out loud but I couldn't mistake even the ostensibly cheerful surface as an uncritical celebration of moviemaking or Spielberg's process, especially once the bully calls into question Spielberg's later role in propagating harmful "man's man" stereotypes.
That’s an intriguing observation; I wasn’t reading it that way at the time, but I now kind of want to rewatch that sequence with this in mind.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#46 Post by The Curious Sofa » Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:09 am

I unreservedly loved this and I hope that just like A.I. kicked off a string of mid-career masterpieces, after the double whammy of West Side Story and The Fablemans this continues another string of great Spielberg movies at a point when I pretty much lost interest in his films. The scene where Sammy figures out there
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is something going on between his mother and "Uncle" Benny while editing a home movie, should go down as one of his great sequences. It reminded my of Travolta piecing together the assassination in Blow Out, but the way he draws a connection between persistence of vision and frame-by-frame heartbreak transcends mere self awareness, I found it incredibly poignant (even if The Simpsons got there first). Sammy's first girlfriend who grapples with her sexuality via her love for Jesus is just one of many smart, funny, emotionally generous observations and that perfect cameo at the end had me laughing well into the credits, talk about life lessons!
They'll probably hand the Oscar to Banchett for another iteration of her "grand dame" routine but Michelle Williams is astonishing here. Her mixture of narcissism and tenderness is a maternal character I've never quite seen like that on screen before (I have in my family). The closest I would come to describe her performance is that it's pitched somewhere between Gena Rowlands and Judy Garland, but then it's still entirely its own thing. Michelle Yeoh was fine in Everything Everywhere All at Once, a film so eager to please it didn't make me feel a single thing, but her harried wife and mother is comparatively onenote against the emotional complexity Williams registers here.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#47 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 15, 2022 10:26 am

I felt like the girlfriend's main purpose -including her emphasized identity as a Catholic and its incongruity with her sexual development- was designed for Spielberg to cheekily use his current position of power to playfully barb the dominant religion in his life that served as an impetus for social (including, in this case, romantic) alienation. I'm curious what made her appear more three dimensional to you

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#48 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Dec 15, 2022 11:01 am

I was worried that character was going to be entirely a one-note joke and/or punching bag as well, but I did think her reaction to his
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sudden proposal at prom that she abandon college and move to LA with him was revealing of more actual character. She may be using him as a bit of a fetish object, but she’s astute enough that when he blurts out that his parents are divorcing she sees that he’s clinging to her as an overcorrection to his own family’s turbulence. She may have been the butt of the joke initially (though even the initial scene in her room is a bit self-deprecating on Spielberg’s part as he says whatever he’s got to say to get to second base), but she’s not the one who ends up looking pathetic in their breakup scene.

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#49 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 15, 2022 1:18 pm

Interesting, I think that's definitely implicit in her reaction and he's admittedly showing himself as young and misguided with a 'first love', but I also thought
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the blasphemy of divorce for Catholics drove her reaction, and that would seem to be the surface-level 'reason' even if there's something happening underneath
though, again, I don't think Spielberg is quite aware of what he's trying to communicate under the iceberg with his characters and the film fails in large part for that lacking

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Re: The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)

#50 Post by Drucker » Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:53 am

I agree with almost all of the negative criticism I've seen in this thread. It is pretty surface level and at times approaches some wonderfully hard truths and scenarios it never dives into too deeply. But with that said, I loved this film. I was hooked from the moment it began and never let up.
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As someone that has gone through a failed marriage, Paul Dano lamenting that his wife isn't happy and he doesn't know what he can do to make her happy was the moment of the film for me, and easily as gripping as the best moment in Jaws when Brody's son is sitting at the table with him, not realizing what his father is going through. It's a film about growth and progress, and the realization that there is no going back. Sam's life as far as he knows begins with his first movie screening. Dad chooses to uproot the family, and brings Benny with them, dooming them. Once Sam realizes his mother is being unfaithful, he can't unsee it. Once he has controlled an actor's emotion in film, it's a drug he is hooked on. These emotionally heavy moments anger and upset his family, and yet without them he would never be the man he is.
Spielberg does not give us an honest, deep, and thoughtful look at the personal and emotional turmoil surrounding his upbringing. Instead, we get a Spielberg picture which strips out the aliens, time travel, war, fish, and other dramatic events, and only leaves us with the family drama, and nothing to soften the blow. The stakes may seem a bit lower, and he's not as thorough as he could be. But maybe he's only keeping the stuff that was worth keeping in. After all, he did cut the most emotionally gripping moment of the film out of the family movie, and maybe that stuff stays on the cutting room floor in The Fabelmans as well.

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