Critique
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The filmmaker reaches an unprecedented level of intimacy by delivering a film that depicts his own childhood and adolescence, articulated around his discovery of cinema, the separation from his parents and his Jewishness.
“I had been hiding from this story since I was 17. Everyone sees me as an incredible success story, but no one knows until you have the courage yourself to say: “Here is who I am.”” It is with these humble words that Steven Spielberg received the Golden Globe for Best Picture for The Fabelmans in January. Even those who did not wait until the 2010s to consider him a great filmmaker were surprised by such exposure. Might as well warn right away: it’s nothing next to the film.
At 75, Spielberg allows himself the luxury of directing his own biopic: the Fabelmans in question are none other than the Spielbergs themselves in this film where he recounts his childhood and adolescence, in middle America of the 1950s and 60. Transported from town to town as their father rises socially, a computer genius whose discoveries precipitate the advent of computers, Sammy, his three sisters and their mother Mitzi try to exist as best they can. For Sammy, it’s not difficult: he has discovered a passion for cinema, and with his parents’ small camera, he spends all his free time directing his sisters in short amateur films. Their house is a veritable battlefield with little girls who