The Fabelmans 4K 2022 Ultra HD 2160p

Life begins with a movie: the starting point of Steven Spielberg's autobiography is snowy January 1952 and a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. Movies, on the other hand, always start with a train - if you don't believe me, ask the Lumiere Brothers or Edwin S. Porter. Is one possible without the other? That night, for little Sammy-Steven (Mateo Zorion Francis-DeFord), it became forever clear that no. The magic of cinematography wants to take home in his pocket, keep the projection on his palm, show it to his mother over and over again, and not let the waking dream evaporate. But magic is not born by itself: Hanukkah is coming up, which means you can ask for a railroad as a gift and try to repeat the irreversible collision you saw in the cinema.

The Fabelmans 4K Review
Life begins with a movie: the starting point of Steven Spielberg's autobiography is snowy January 1952 and a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. Movies, on the other hand, always start with a train - if you don't believe me, ask the Lumiere Brothers or Edwin S. Porter. Is one possible without the other? That night, for little Sammy-Steven (Mateo Zorion Francis-DeFord), it became forever clear that no. The magic of cinematography wants to take home in his pocket, keep the projection on his palm, show it to his mother over and over again and not let the waking dream evaporate. But magic isn't born by itself: Hanukkah is coming up, which means you can ask for a railroad as a gift and try to replicate the irreversible collision you saw in the movie theater.

Spielberg has been making movies about himself and his family for half a century: his parents' divorce and absentee fathers in "Alien" and "Third Degree Close Encounters," Jewish identity and feeling like an outsider in "West Side Story," the burden of an outsider driven by bullies in "The Duel." For years, the director has left the finishing touches of a self-portrait on the scale of universal upheaval, where a small self hid behind big aliens, dinosaurs, treasure hunters and endless adventures. Today, Spielberg is brutally candid: The Fabelmans is a tender, romanticized but shamelessly sincere account of the author's childhood and adolescence. Everything that might seem like fiction - the truth multiplied by two: and the monkey in the living room, and shooting horror movies with sisters in the closet, and the painful parting of Mr. and Mrs. "West Side Story" was Spielberg's dedication to his father; "The Fabelmans" is an ode to his mother. Both are no longer alive; both wanted Spielberg to one day make a movie about the Spielbergs.

Fable (and the Fabelmans are almost Fablets) and fiction are the road to recognition, but, more importantly, also to acceptance: Stephen is the son of his parents, the scion of the family name, the continuator of tradition. From his father and mother, he has exactly half each: the technical mind and mechanical consistency of Arnold-Burt (the expressive Paul Dano) and the infantilism and optimism of Leah-Mitzy (the prohibitive level of skill of Michelle Williams). "The Fabelmans" is a psychotherapy session nearly three hours long and costing about $40 million. A frank conversation, confession, gratitude and the discovery of a secret that was never a secret.

Spielberg and his longtime collaborator screenwriter Tony Kushner made up a quarantined coming-of-age story based on true events: Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle took over the baton) grows up, falls in love, fights with his mother in the kitchen and giggles with his sisters at the dinner table. The Spielberg-director found the strength to take a few steps back, to distance himself and see his relatives as people. Close, understandable, non-ideal, and therefore alive - now forever alive on film. One wants to meet the Fabelmans and play bridge in the backyard on weekends: one cannot help but fall in love with the grimy engineer Bert and with "Peter Penka" Mitzi. And for an agile lady, it was impossible not to fall in love with her husband's best friend Benny (Seth Rogan). Spielberg spares the mother's tone of judgment, once again turning the humanist soul outward. Hearts boomerang back with audience sympathy.

Among the many reminiscence pictures that break out now and then in the filmographies of big writers (from Almodovar to Iñárritu, from Gerwig to Gray), "The Fabelmans" sins neither narcissism nor excessive sympathy for the director's alter ego. The gentle irony and nurturing of the dreamer is akin to Spielberg's confession to Richard Linklater's space tale "Apollo 10 1/2," which came out a few months earlier. It's like a gentle fatherly pat on the shoulder and a frame-by-frame "thank you." Thank you for keeping dreaming and not giving up.

Spielberg chuckles and admits that Gabriel LaBelle is a lot cuter than he once was, a coquetry the director can afford. The Fabelmans talk about the metamorphosis of the world in the camera's optics both a lot and willingly and infectiously. In the charlatan magic of the motion picture camera lies an algorithm for eternal love. The simplest little things in the frame turn into revelations, and a toy train in the basement can break the light into a great catastrophe. Plus, you can make up an encounter with John Ford and have David Lynch play the great director. If you're Steven Spielberg, you won't be turned down.

In the film's mirror, the 75-year-old Spielberg sees a sometimes cranky, sometimes selfish but determined and sensitive boy who hits bumps and collects heartbreaks. But Sammy is happy because he always knew what he wanted. And Stephen is happy because he knows he got what he wanted and more. "The Fabelmans" is not rewarded with a happy ending: Mitzi and Bert split up, and Leah and Arnold get back together 15 years after the breakup and live together into old age. Stephen, after a dozen high school movies, finds himself in the studio - and that's not the end, it's just a happy beginning.