According to some critics, Fabelmans is the best film directed by Steven Spielberg in the last two decades. In his new film, he not only confesses his love for cinema, but also talks about the anti-Semitism he suffered from as a schoolboy. In a film with a lyrical-romantic, nostalgic atmosphere, the famous director recalls his childhood in the 50s and 60s.
What is Fabelmans about?
The Jewish enclave in New Jersey became Sammy Fabelman’s home. The boy grew up in the family of Bert, a computer engineer, and Mitzi, a pianist-housewife, who tries to combine motherhood and personal freedom. The older Fabelman befriends his co-worker Benny, who is a frequent visitor to his family, posing as the boy’s playful “uncle” who became addicted to cinema after watching The Greatest Show on Earth.
Father told Sammy about the formation of a smooth picture in the human eye from 24 frames, which are quickly scrolled by a movie camera. His creative wife compared cinema to dreams transferred to the screen.
The boy was amazed by the train crash, after which his mother bought him a movie camera. He used a toy train to recreate the crash. The movie camera has become a lens for observing the world around him, and cinema has become the only way to sort out relationships with his parents.
The meaning of the film Fabelmans
Sammy’s dream is to make films. The movie camera helps him not to notice life’s problems. From the circus performer, Uncle Boris, he heard that for the sake of art, the creator must sacrifice something. Steven Spielberg is quite happy in his personal life, but he devotes too much energy and time to cinema, which he could spend on family and meeting friends.
Sammy is a kind, eccentric, slightly shy high school student who is mocked by his peers. He lives in an imaginary world created with a reality-transforming movie camera. Young Fabelman likes cinema, as he himself can create events and change reality by playing with his imagination. But cinema is not entertainment, but painstaking work.
From Uncle Boris, Sammy learned that he did not immediately get into the circus. He sacrificed a lot for his dream. Therefore, one should take one’s calling seriously. The imagination of the young Fabelman helps to model the transformed reality with the help of a movie camera. He creates artistic images based on his own experiences.
Loneliness and misunderstanding are frequent companions of a real creator, especially a talented one. Sammy is not understood by close people, especially his father. He believes that, having matured, his son will be less interested in cinema, because now the boy does not spend time with toys, as he did a few years ago. Burt hope that the child’s wild imagination will be replaced by a harsh mind.
Cinema appeals to Sammy both as a cozy fantasy world and as a way to experience the world. He needs a movie camera to express his own thoughts, fears and feelings. A teenager fell in love with a religious girl, but because of his insecurity, he is afraid to admit it to her. A young Jew is bullied by sportsmen who have been swallowed up by their own spiritual poverty. They express themselves only through rudeness. The set has become for Sammy a place where he can be in charge, control the situation, rethink and recreate reality. This is the whole essence of creativity and Steven Spielberg himself. He does not make his films for the entertainment of the uneducated ignoramuses. The viewers in his paintings cry, laugh, rethink their own lives and find options for correcting negative situations.
Sammy made a documentary about the school holiday. Editing helped him change the meanings. So in his picture, the school bully became an exemplary hero. Seeing his best version, the fighter was sincerely delighted, talked with Sammy and became the defender of the young director, who was attacked by the unbalanced friend of the bully, bred in the Fabelman film, as a beastly nonentity. Cinema is, on the one hand, a reflection of life, and on the other hand, it is the awakening of the soul, a change in human essence, showing a model that you need to be equal to, without reading boring notations. The inner nature of a person is changed by the artistic images he sees.
It becomes clear to the Fabelmans that cinema is a way of changing reality, which becomes kind and soft. In the new film, Spielberg rethought his own childhood, remembered his non-conflict parents, who knew how to forgive and sympathize. It was in childhood that the birth of a master director took place, who talentedly transferred his verified autobiography to the screen. Sammy exists in a Spielberg-controlled environment. The director even prevented the divorce of father and mother in the film.
Explanation of the ending of the film Fabelmans
The ending of Fabelmans was known to Steven Spielberg long before the filming. The main character, a young passionate director, comes to the office of his great colleague John Ford. Idol shares his own wisdom with Sam. Such a meeting took place half a century ago. At the end of the picture, reality and myth-making are intertwined during the intersection of three legendary directors in one place. Spielberg himself appears in a surprising cameo.
Cinematography can be called moving pictures. With the help of a movie camera, they objectively and indifferently capture reality. Movies combine emotions and impressions. This is the art of giving birth to special meanings that the artist may not even be aware of, for example, Sammy does not understand what idea was laid down in his film. Movies are symbols combined into a system of artistic images with emotional overtones. It can be compared to a lighthouse that helps the ship move along a safe path, not get lost in the fog and not suffer from a collision with sharp rocks, safely reaching a safe harbor. Filmmakers relay higher meanings that cannot be seen or touched. Cinema is an unconscious, transcendent art that requires greater responsibility from creators. Young Sam learned about this from his old uncle.
Cinema can be a carrier of light, helping a person to understand himself, affirming eternal and unchanging moral meanings, or rude, deceitful and immoral propaganda, under the influence of which the human soul perishes. Real artists are always fighting an internal struggle. They are tormented by doubts, fears and mercantile desires to please the viewer. “White crows” find it difficult to live in a conformist society. True creators are lonely, as they are understood only by a few people who are well versed in art.
“Fabelmans” ends with the moment when the professional career of the protagonist of the film begins, the further fate of which is well known to fans of Steven Spielberg. This picture became for him an artistic rethinking of his own private life. The outstanding director gave it the form of a parable, the main theme of which was the growing up of a boy in love with cinema. The film shows the people who inspired Spielberg to continue his beloved work. For the film director, it has become life itself, which will continue even after his departure from our world.
