![]() Here, the director (with repeat collaborator Tony Kushner helping him to write his first script since 2001’s “A.I. Whether it’s an emotionally distant dad letting his family fall apart in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or an adult Peter Pan fighting for his children in “Hook,” such bonds clearly matter in Spielberg’s on-screen fictions because the same connections broke down in his off-screen reality. Now, if you’ve grown up with Spielberg’s movies (and who hasn’t?), you’ve surely picked up on certain recurring themes, especially in the way parents relate to their kids. More similar to Woody Allen’s autobiographical “Radio Days” than it is to European art films such as “The 400 Blows” and “Amarcord” (the more highbrow models other directors typically point to when re-creating their childhoods), “The Fabelmans” invites audiences into the home and headspace of the world’s most beloved living director, an oddly sanitized zone where even the trauma - which includes anti-Semitism, financial disadvantage and divorce - seems to go better with fresh-buttered popcorn. Spielberg’s a born storyteller, and these are arguably his most precious stories.įrom the first movie he saw (“The Greatest Show on Earth”) to memories of meeting filmmaker John Ford on the Paramount lot, this endearing, broadly appealing account of how Spielberg was smitten by the medium - and why the prodigy nearly abandoned picture-making before his career even started - holds the keys to so much of the master’s filmography. And now, at the spry young age of 75, Spielberg himself weighs in on where his preoccupations come from in “ The Fabelmans,” a personal account of his upbringing that feels like listening to two and a half hours’ worth of well-polished cocktail-party anecdotes, only better, since he’s gone to the trouble of staging them all for our benefit. Dissertations have been written and documentaries made on the subject. ![]() No director has done more to deconstruct the myth of the suburban American family than Steven Spielberg. ![]()
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