The FabelMans Movie Honest Review

The Fabelmans, a middle-class Jewish family in the middle of the 20th century, are the center of Steven Spielberg's film. The film delves into the conflicts between an individual's artistic pursuits and their personal responsibilities, as well as the mysteries of talent and happiness. The family comprises of the matriarch Mitzi, a former concert pianist, now a homemaker and piano teacher, and the patriarch Burt, a scientist working for various tech companies who likes to shoot home movies. One night, Mitzi and Burt take their eight-year-old son Sammy to his first theatrical film experience, "The Greatest Show on Earth," which ends with a spectacular miniature train crash sequence. Sammy becomes obsessed with the scene and asks for a train set, which he crashes in an attempt to recreate the scene, angering his father. Mitzi suggests that Sammy shoot the trains crashing with his father's camera instead of bashing the trains to watch one crash over and over again. Sammy is a prodigy and a potential genius, as his first film employs multiple, dynamic angles to capture the crash and uses editing to create suspense and visual humor.

However, the film is not just about Sammy's talent; it also explores the difficulties of marriage, parenting, and being someone's child. The idea of the miracle of talent is not just limited to the central trio of Sammy, Mitzi, and Burt, but also through a secondary character, Burt's best friend, Benny Loewy, who is like a family member. Benny seems to click more with Mitzi than with Burt, who is a good husband and father, but boring and controlling. Benny, on the other hand, is witty, energetic, and a gifted mate and parent like Burt is at science, Sammy at filmmaking, and Mitzi was at performance. He knows what the family wants and needs.

Where do these gifts come from? It's mysterious and arrives out of nowhere, much like the shark in "Jaws" or the UFOs in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Sammy's Uncle Boris explains to him that talented individuals must commit to their craft, and the more fiercely they do, the more they may neglect their loved ones, inducing guilt. From an early age, Sammy knows that a camera can be used not just to tell stories but to win friends, placate or manipulate enemies, woo prospective romantic partners, glamorize and humiliate, shield the artist against hurt during painful moments, smooth out or obstruct the truth and blatantly lie. Sammy continues to refine his skills through adolescence and learns from his mother's high-heeled shoe puncturing a piece of sheet music on the living room carpet that he can punch holes in strips of film to make it seem like the boys' toy guns are firing blanks, like in a real movie. He wins a photography merit badge for directing a World War II combat film starring his fellow Eagle Scouts.

When Burt moves the family to California, a fissure opens up in the family. Sammy faces torment at school because of his Jewish heritage. The different manifestations of Fabelman talent exacerbate the issue, creating fraught moments where the characters have to choose between revealing an important but hurtful truth or keeping it to themselves in the name of domestic tranquility.

Sammy's filmmaking talent and passion continues to grow as he faces new challenges in his personal life. He discovers that making movies can be a way to deal with trauma, to cope with loss, and to create something beautiful out of pain. As he becomes more confident in his skills, he takes on bigger projects, such as a horror movie that he films in a local cemetery.

At the same time, the tension in his family increases as Burt becomes increasingly obsessed with his work and his ambitions for his son. Mitzi, meanwhile, begins to feel unfulfilled and unhappy in her role as a homemaker, and seeks solace in her friendship with Benny. As the family struggles to stay together amidst these conflicting desires and needs, Sammy's filmmaking becomes a way to explore and express his own identity, as well as a way to connect with and understand the people around him.

In the end, the film is not just a portrait of a family, but a meditation on the nature of creativity and talent, and on the human need to create and express ourselves. It is a tribute to the power of art to heal and transform, to the importance of following our passions and embracing our unique gifts, and to the complex and ever-shifting dynamics of family life. With its richly drawn characters, stunning visuals, and emotional depth, Steven Spielberg's film about the Fabelmans is a masterpiece that will touch and inspire audiences for generations to come.