But to get hung up on exactly what did and didn’t happen seems especially limiting in a movie that, like most magic tricks, relies on a sly weave of substance and illusion. (His returning screenwriter, Tony Kushner, may also have an inkling.) The question hangs over everything Sammy experiences: the upheaval of multiple family relocations from New Jersey to Arizona to California, a tough-love lesson (delivered by a marvelous Judd Hirsch) on what it means to give your life to art, a fateful camping trip with a family friend (Seth Rogen), devastating losses and acts of betrayal, vicious antisemitic attacks at school, the stirrings of young love. In “The Fabelmans,” the flickering light of a projector beam can fabricate beautiful lies and bring ugly truths to the surface, sometimes in the same instance.Īnd what is the precise ratio of lies to truths in this captivating, shrewdly calculated trip down memory lane? Only Spielberg truly knows.
More than once we see Mitzi huddling in the dark to watch one of her son’s short films, and each time what she sees takes her by surprise, not always pleasantly so. His mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is emotionally generous and tempestuous by nature, with a passionate artistic sensibility - she’s a gifted pianist - that reflects Sammy’s own. His father, Burt (Paul Dano), a computer developer on the rise, is patient and kind, if also too much of a pragmatist and workaholic to fully appreciate Sammy’s gifts. Sammy is accompanied on this journey by the other members of his close-knit Jewish family: his younger sisters, who delight in acting in his early home movies, and his parents, who are variably supportive of his obsession. (He’s played in his teenage years, and for most of the movie’s 2½-hour running time, by Gabriel LaBelle.) That’s a lesson Sammy will learn again and again as the years pass, bringing forth changes both mundane and momentous, including his steady transformation from a passionate young movie lover into an emergent master filmmaker. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth,” typically remembered as one of the worst films to win the Oscar for best picture, but hey, the movie gods work in mysterious ways. His eyes are opened, improbably, by Cecil B. On a cold 1952 night in New Jersey, a young boy named Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) goes to the movies with his family and finds his life forever changed. “The Fabelmans,” a lovingly fictionalized re-creation of a life lived in thrall to the power of cinema, makes that theme explicit from the start. This 10-day event reliably squeezes its biggest premieres into its opening weekend, ensuring sold-out shows and maximum media exposure even still, it was a bold move to program the world premiere of “The Fabelmans” less than an hour after that of another dazzling feat of cinematic prestidigitation: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rian Johnson’s splendidly entertaining follow-up to his 2019 Toronto-premiered murder mystery, “Knives Out.”įrom the moment they were announced, these were the festival’s two hottest tickets, and unveiling them back-to-back felt like both a boast and a promise: After a few years of COVID-19 pandemic disruption, Toronto was back in full force, baby, and so perhaps were the movies themselves and their power to captivate hundreds - nay, thousands - of strangers clustered together in the dark. That ending was one of a few enchantments in store for audiences fortunate enough to find themselves at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night. Spielberg, who’s been criticized over the years for his supposedly weak kickers, sticks the landing here with a wit and grace that might leave you wondering, “How’d he do that?,” even as it becomes clear he couldn’t have done it any other way. I won’t spoil anything here (the official release is still two months away), but let’s just say that ending is a shimmering blend of personal and cinematic history, features a gem of a surprise performance and closes with a visual flourish - a literal parting shot - that turns imperfection into utter perfection. Moments after the final scene of “The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s exquisitely funny and melancholy memory piece, unspooled here in Toronto on Saturday night, I scribbled two words in my notebook: “magic trick.” As with a lot of great movie endings, that scene is what a lot of viewers filing out of the theater will be eager to discuss first.
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