Fuck the Fabelmans

Fuck The Fabelmans, I'm all about the Sy Ablemans. If you want to see the ridiculous nature and contradictions of growing up in a Jewish family, one would be wise to rewatch the Coen Brothers classic A Serious Man. In that film a complex puzzle is presented between order and chaos with religion being used as an absurdist tool to create a false sense of control. But does it work? Faith and fact compete in the mind of Larry Gopnik, a physics professor in crisis who must raise his family in the traditional way he believes to be right with the truth that makes itself known every day. Cleverly, the film is structured around his scheduled visits to see multiple rabbis. As he climbs up the ladder, humorously, each one appears to have a different take on how to deal with his problems. Ironically, all his answers lie in the background of his lectures to his students with the uncertainty principle. Making one wonder, even if we had the ability to explain life with an equation could we even begin to understand it?

Spielberg's latest contribution to wimp cinema is so wince inducing that it ought to be avoided at all costs. It asks not a single compelling question and cruises by on its own corny sentimental rubbish. Over the years, he's received great criticism for his traditional conservative filmmaking style, popularising a lazy family oriented model and boringly liberal politics. All of which have irritated me at some time or another. However, to a large extent, I have come to terms with these things. In spite of them all, he's made incredible movies, a fact that no-one can deny. His catalogue is so large that everyone must have at least one film of his they like surely? Nothing can prepare though for how pathetic his latest film turns out to be.

Everyone knows, you need to develop a bit of a sweet tooth to consume most of his films. Such is the way of Amblin films. When he's got it right on films like E.T. and Jurassic Park I'll praise it. To create such family entertainment operating on the calibre those do is undeniably profound and I'll defend that. Anyone who keeps the nippers entertained has my respect. There has to be a line though, has to be. A point at which a filmmaker needs to take a good look at themself and not given into such mawkish mentalities.

Keep conquering the limitations of special effects with your buddie George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic and nostalgically revisiting old serials but no-one said you had to be so schmaltzy. If there is an art to what Spielberg does it is in his pushing the medium with his use of effects. Spielberg and Lucas's mantra has always been admirable. Take the high production values of 2001 and apply them to Flash Gordon type narratives with quicker pacing. Sure, it had an unfortunate knock on effect for Flash Gordon inspired independents and auteurs in the New Hollywood model wanting to challenge older audiences but it can't be denied they had many successful and likeable hits along the way.

Sharks? Cool. Dinosaurs? Cool. James Bond like archeologists? Cool. Cinephiles? Decidedly un-cool as it turns out after watching The Fabelmans

Honestly, if this film is what cinephilia is, know that I want no part of it. I never got in to this game to be like the protagonist in The Fabelmans. Why I did in the first place has become less clear over the years but if there was any cure to this addiction for me, it would lie in watching The Fabelmans repeatedly. Aiming as low as it does, it is an embarrassment to my sensibilities of what cinema has the potential to be. Whilst I wouldn't want to give an answer to the reason for my love of cinema, just know it has nothing to do with this film. Think it's time we put away these lover letters to cinema. At this point, I think it would be more of an exciting exercise to get hate mail to cinema. Like, time to champion other mediums. Pack our bags lads, we're done.

The Fabelmans is such a blatant attack at the heart that is so obvious that there's no way your body couldn't step up the defences and ward it off instantly. I remain surprised at its warm reception. Truthfully, I haven't liked one of this man's films in a very, very long time. You'd have to go right back to 2005s Munich. Ok, so maybe Crystal Skull had a few solid set pieces and doo wop (before the abysmal CGI overload at the end of course) and Bridge of Spies has a few fun spy elements no doubt courtesy of the Coen Brothers. Genuinely, though, let's face it, the dude hasn't made a great film since Munich.

Are you really going to sit here and tell me Ready Player One was a good movie? Represents the worst of modern cinema with its affinity for pointless easter eggs that do nothing to advance the plot and are merely for advertising purposes. Also, another dreadful attempt at incorporating the internet in to cinema. Did have a cool car though and I like the use of Tom Sawyer. Lincoln? Snoozer. War Horse? Behave. The BFG? He should have retired after that one. What confuses me is there's clearly a more intellectual filmmaker in him than that which meets the eye. Duel and Jaws mask these within tense thrillers too. Hence, why they rank amongst his best. The man's even got a Phillip K Dick adaptation in Minority Report.

If you ever wanted to see his battle between his selective intellectual stabs and dumbed down family entertainment, look no further than AI. That film is at war with itself between the existential Kubrick film it started life as and sweet tooth Spielberg movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind exhibits this issue to some degree too. Due to the presence of French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut, there's this potential for it to be this satirical observation of the spectacle in the package of a blockbuster spectacle. Justifying the effects as art whilst slipping in to what it could have been critiquing. Either way, I liked that one.

No-ones saying he should have to make just adult oriented films. Would prefer it though if he did more of a mix of both and could control himself on the kiddier projects. He's only gotten worse over the years. Maybe this guys actually Benjamin Button cause he ain't getting older, he's regressing. With his last two he's become more insufferable than ever. Entered a lazy nostalgia period without any intelligence whatsoever. Surely, one grows more questioning and subtle with age? His age seems to have regressed to the point he now has the mind of a child. There's simply no other way to explain it. This whole film feels completely alien to me and there's no way it could have come from a 76 year old man. What are these emotions? Does he need some major trauma to happen to him so he can grow tolerably cynical like any other old man? The Fabelmans takes it to a whole new level of goey Limits have been reached, he's gone one step too far this time and produced easily his worst film to date.

Let's start with the opening of The Fabelmans because we need to talk about a new type of cinematic crime being committed today. Adorably, this opens with the protagonist as a kid standing with his parents in a bright blue coat. Honestly, after Schindler's List, I couldn't think of a better way to begin a Spielberg self-reflexive quasi biopic. A lovely visual reference to his career and the only good one in the movie. Unfortunately, this is then ruined very quickly by this recent trend of what I'm going to call cinemasplaining. This term does not include metatextual conversations about other movies. To do so is completely fine and encouraged as part of a postmodernist approach. No, cinemasplaining is the act of patronisingly explaining the process of how cinema operates.

In this scene, the camera pans left and we see the kids Dad describing what happens when images are played at 24 frames per second. Then we pan to the right and if like myself, you thought this was excruciating the first time, they do it again as the mother contributes some further unwanted details. Back and forth they go, relentlessly revealing this information. There is something so unforgivably insulting about the scene, notably with the use of POV. It's as though Spielberg is saying the common man does not understand a technique that's been around for decades and such culture is above them. As a result of the construction of the sequence, we too are treated like the child in the scene. We are spoken down to and that is the tone of the entire movie. It seems like they've made an entire movie around cinemasplaining with this Empire of Light, may have to avoid that one.

To explain cinema so literally and childishly like this massively takes away from experience of tackling how one could become so arrested by cinema. Considering the intentions of The Fabelmans, this does not seem such a wise move by any stretch of the imagination. This is not a film with many things on the brain but they couldn't even address the one question at the heart of it and that is why is one allured by cinema? Outed as a fraud on scene one. Good work, Stephen!

Spielberg then goes on to commit an error even more glaring than David De Gea the other week against Everton. He forgets that home movies are called home movies for a reason. Cause they fucking stay at home! Keep that personal nonsense for your family and close friends cause no-one else gives a shit. Often, I do wonder what some of Scorsese's early lost Roman epics that he made when he was about 8 were like but then I remember it's probably for the best. Most filmmakers definitely lie about this word 'lost', which really means it's so bad they don't want you to see it. Old 8MM footage like this is about as artful as watching a Tik Tok. One should not be fooled by their own nostalgia. Set up a projector, show the family, no-one else needs to see it. What transpires for a good majority of the film with these cowboy and war films is so bad it makes Son of Rambow look like The Godfather.

This leads us to the most lauded sequence in the film. Spielberg discovering his mother was having an affair through his home videos, leading to divorce and a mummy's boy act that forever changed cinema. Weaving in these unconventional family structures in to all his films has always been a progressive move from the big man. A move I can get behind in its subtle and poignant nature but in The Fabelmans its totally surface level and cheap. He explored all of this much better in his other films when it was a background factor. E.T. is definitely him revisiting his father's separation and desire for a best friend so creating it in this alien creature. Embracing the divorce so head on has led to his weakest exploration of atypical units. That moment where he reveals the affair is so cinematic that it almost borders on transcendental. Removing it from the context, the montage is superbly crafted. When viewed though as it is and knowing the drama, I can't help but think oh come on. Has such an annoying coming of age vibe to it. The kind that has proven popular with younger audiences. For the life of me I can't understand the appeal in swaying to such easy emotions. Don't you snap out of that at some point?

Laughably, this then causes the protagonist to question his dedication to cinema. There's probably a great Freudian subtext here linking cinema and the mother but in this case it's not explored that way it's just fucking stupid. Aftersun almost touched on the menage a trois of camera, child and parent but substitutes mystery for underwriting. Blonde remains the best and most extreme to tackle the relationship in 2022.

Spielberg's take is expectedly entirely clueless. The mother character says lines like, "Movies are dreams" and Seth Rogen's character later states something to the effect of, "You can't stop making movies, it'll break your mother's heart". Imagine hinging your drama on such a thing as this. How out of touch from reality do you have to come to do that? Sadly, this is the era we're now in of Spielberg movies as he approaches death and retirement. The film is in competition with itself to outdo the last line on how cringeworthy it can be. In all fairness, it achieves all this consistently.

Perhaps, I could let the film off for Spielberg's initial fascination with cinema at a young age being trains crashing if it grew in to something more meaningful but the film never expands outside the technical notion of a set piece into anything more long lasting or psychologically relevant. I know special effects have always driven his movies to a large extent but does he really have such a limited concept of cinema? Maybe I held too much respect for him.

Another eye roller that nearly made me burst out laughing was the protagonist's uncle appearing and going on a rant about how "art can sometimes be dangerous". He's played as this wacky off the wall elder wiser character giving out advice. I mean when have Spielberg's movies ever been dangerous? Thematically speaking. He's made an entire career out of what could be referred to as safe cinema. That's not to knock it, as I said before he can be great. Why's he suddenly pretending he's Gaspar Noe master cinema provocateur? I would defend Spielberg's movies as art rather than shallow blockbusters but that would be in the effects pushing the boundaries of technology. It would not be in the pushing of the envelope. Stephen, you can't just sporadically make a film like Munich every 20 years where you say a revenge mission even when warranted still leads to a collective guilt of actions and then paint yourself as a controversial filmmaker. I'm not allowing it. You can't even talk about art when you make a movie as superficial as The Fabelmans. Those looking for a commentary on what art is will not find it here. No chance. 3

In the second half, The Fabelmans descends in to the most generic, trite coming of age drama you've ever seen. Utterly forgettable and bland with one killer line that is a contender for the worst in the movie. Since, he's now in his teens at high school, there is a bully on the scene. This bully loses his mind because of how the protagonist captures him in his school movie. A confrontation takes place at the lockers (where else would it take place?) and the bully queries why the protagonist portrayed him as a 'hero' on screen. To which the main characters response is, get ready for this, "I made you fly on screen!". How up your own arse do you have to get to be coming out with cringeworthy lines like that? Come back to reality, Stephen. No other explanation for it, living too well in Hollywood thinking you're untouchable must do that to a man. Get in some danger please Stephen, I beg you.

During prom, our protagonist then goes and asks his date (whom he's never taken out before) to marry him. This just about sums up how pathetic this movie is. Pure cuck cinema. Maybe that shit goes down well on the coming of age crowd but it don't do nothing for me. Finally, after that moment of stupidity, we jump to Stephen looking for film jobs fresh out of film school. I shit you not, he starts crying cause noone sends him any job offers. Here's the thing, you've got no reason to be getting emotional cause 5 minutes after film school you're not John fucking Ford. You've got no right. These California and New York guys get it on a plate. Come out of uni and instantly get a job. Got no sympathy for him. Most people got to wait years for that. How contrived. A few weeks after film school? That's rookie numbers, get a grip!

Eventually, he's offered a tour of a studio which culminates in a legendary visit of John Ford's office. Hilariously played by David Lynch who goes in to discussing how to shoot horizons. This might have been better had all the drama in the movie leading up to this felt even remotely real. To make matters worse, once he's done here the protagonist strolls out the office all confident, striding across the studio lot like this will soon be his castle. A completely arrogant walk with a face you'll want to punch. There's no way you can be this self-satisfied if you made a movie like The Fabelmans. Mostly, I feel bad for Spielberg's friends who have to pretend this is a good movie. As expected, Scorsese just focused on the John Ford scene when asked about it.

Mentioning Scorsese is interesting because both of these are around the same age and emerged together. Yet, when Scorsese faces death and grows nostalgic we get The Irishman. A return to the mob movie but with a sense of death like never before. The characters more immersed in guilt than previously and with an even wider political scope addressing the mafia's closed off relationship with the casinos in communist Cuba and political assassinations. When Spielberg faces death and grows nostalgic we get the fucking Fabelmans. I knew I picked wisely when I decided Martin Scorsese was the king of American cinema.

Bonus Points:

-The boy in the blue coat

-David Lynch cameo

Overall Score: 1/5 4