Last Friday, before I went to the Forum cinema to see The Fabelmans, an archaic pre-Covid reflex made me say: Let’s see! Spielberg’s film just won the big screen to several strong reviews. If we bumped our noses on a full session… Let’s get there in advance. So we poirot for a long time. Because the poor cinema drinks the cup after the upheavals of the last years. And even though Spielberg offered a piece of a very Oscar-winning king as food, rows of empty seats were spread out at the counter on a grid offered to too many possible choices. If he doesn’t sell out, who will, if not Avatar ? But maybe the public will emerge from its cozy cocoon and flock there soon, I thought hopefully. This image magician reveals himself so much in his latest film. Even through what he tries to hide…
From the sublime Rome, by Alfonso Cuarón, in 2018, leading filmmakers are multiplying autobiographical works in theaters or on platforms. By Kenneth Branagh (Belfast) via Paolo Sorrentino (God’s hand), James Gray (Armageddon Time) and many others, it’s time to reinterpret the tender age that marks with a hot iron. Spielberg could not remain outdone. Especially since the period of confinement had led to the rise of the first sources. Where everything ferments and bubbles auguring the future.
The director ofAND and of Hook has always kept one foot in childhood, alive in him, to celebrate it and defuse it in turn. The Fabelmans, steeped in humour, a love letter to the seventh art, is also a tribute to the filmmaker’s parents. Michelle Williams as a deliciously whimsical pianist mother steals the show with her charisma. Its light appears so bright, its dance near the fire, so poetic, that one has the impression that Spielberg had Tinker Bell perched on its cradle, vulnerable and unpredictable, yes, but sparkling with magic and charm.
His father (Paul Dano, in the understated role) was a brilliant high-flying computer designer who introduced him to the camera and helped him make his first films, while hoping to see him follow in his footsteps as a career choice. . Even if the parental break-up was a trauma for the young boy, this film in fragments, but very endearing, reveals to us a more solar than dark childhood in this Jewish family stigmatized by the Holocaust, in the shadow of the two protective giants.
Is the apprenticeship of artists partly dreamed of or scrupulously evoked through their subsequent works? Both, no doubt. Certain sections of the past are being patched up, so that ingredients less corrosive than the salt of memories are grafted onto them. Thereby, The Fabelmans mixes truth and fiction. Free was the filmmaker to spice up comic scenes, as if to modestly veil his sorrows and obsessions of yesteryear. It’s all about lighting, really. It is sometimes enough to compare two testimonials to be convinced of this. In the aftermath of the screening, I immersed myself in the romantic biography of Frenchman Gilles Penso, Steven before Spielberg, freshly published by Michel Lafon. This work full of tasty anecdotes on the shootings of the filmmaker of jaws and of Saving Private Ryan sheds a lot of light on childhood. The famous scene of the meeting at Universal studios of the young Spielberg with the great John Ford, authentic and succulent, arises in words as in images. Still, in general, the book and the film color this same period differently.
There where The Fabelmans, beyond the early awakening of a vocation, lovingly portrays parents as almost mythical creatures, but devoted and formidable, Gilles Penso’s book, complementary to the film, less sentimental, sheds light on deep flaws. Little Steven suffered from the absences of his father, taken up with his research, as well as those of his mother, obsessed with preparing for classical concerts. The biography also dwells more on the boy’s phobias. The man who would go on to make so many scary films exorcised his childish terrors on screen, of water, insects, abandonment and everything.
This reading makes us understand to what extent the filmmaker, often a follower of happy endingused The Fabelmans like a catharsis to mark out a path of light after having walked on too many thorns. To tell the truth, rare are the creators who recreate their childhood with the rigor of scientists. They darken it or exalt it in order to get rid of it. But what would be the impact of a work without the imagination and talent to transform a rugged landscape into laughter or tears? So Spielberg’s film at the height of the past is more touching, but less rigorous than the bio forged on his journey.