"Movies are dreams that you never forget."
— Mitzi Fabelman
The Fabelmans is a coming-of-age film directed by Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushnernote . The film is inspired by Spielberg's childhood and teenage years in Arizona and California in the 1950s and 1960s, with a focus on the events that led to his parents' divorce.
The film stars Gabriel LaBelle as Author Avatar Sammy Fabelman, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Sammy's parents Mitzi and Burt, Julia Butters as Sammy's sister Reggie, and Seth Rogen as Burt's best friend (and the Fabelman children's surrogate uncle) Bennie Loewy. It follows the Fabelmans' two major cross-country moves as Sammy confronts anti-Semitism at his high school, discovers a talent and love for filmmaking, and struggles to navigate his parents' contrary natures and goals for both him and their marriage.
Premiering at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2022, the film received a limited theatrical release in the United States on November 11, 2022, before opening wide on November 23, by Universal Picturesnote .
The Fabelmans contains examples of:
- The '50s: Sammy's childhood takes place during this period, starting when his parents take him to see the 1952 film The Greatest Show on Earth.
- The '60s: Sam's teen years takes place during this period, culminating in him graduating with the class of 1964.
- '60s Hair: The girls are sporting long hair held by ponytails or headbands, short flips, and bouffants, Sammy's date wears her hair in the then-trendy Beehive Hairdo, and Sammy's hair grows into a Beatle cut by the time the movie ends in 1966.
- Actor Allusion: Judd Hirsch's character arrives by, and leaves by, a Taxi.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Various kids used for gags in Sammy's Ditch Day documentary laugh happily, even Chad (at least while the camera shows him stealing beer, he gets less amused once it shows him getting rejected by a girl and walking around hungover) and one of the Bird-Poop Gag boys
- Age Cut: 7-year-old Sammy is filming the family car pulling into their Phoenix house for the first time. He directs his father into the driveway, says "Aaaaaaaand—", and the film cuts to 14-year-old Sammy saying "—stop!", as he films his Boy Scout friends.
- All of the Other Reindeer: The Fabelmans are Jewish, and when they move to California, Sam unfortunately faces some anti-Semitic bullying, e.g. calling him Bagelman, demanding he apologize for killing Jesus, and physical assaults (although Women Are Wiser among in that regard). This is in direct contrast to his life in Arizona where he was accepted for who he was and had dozens of close friends and admirers among the Boy Scouts.
- Amicable Exes: Burt and Mitzi, despite the rocky reasons of the split, seem amicable enough to each other.
- Anachronism Stew: In the background of a shot that has vinyl soundtracks, the Deluxe Letterbox Laserdisc release of The Great Escape can be spotted. The format wouldn't be invented for another 13 years.
- Answer Cut: While Sammy and his friends in Arizona are watching The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, one of them asks Sammy, "So, what kind of movie are we going to make?" Cut to another one of his friends dressed up as an outlaw in the western Sammy is making.
- Artistic License – History: While Sammy Fabelman's story is based on Steven Spielberg's own life, there are a few differences between them:
- Sammy finds out about his mother's affair through some footage he shot. In real life, Spielberg didn't find out the truth about his parents divorce until much later.
- While going to school in California, Sammy briefly dates a Christian girl named Monica, before she breaks up with him at prom. Steven Spielberg himself never had a girlfriend during his teenage years.
- Logan continues to be a Jerkass after watching how the Senior Skip Day film glorified him, and angrily asks why Sammy would make him look that good. In real life, according to Spielberg's biographer Joseph McBridge, the bully actually approached him "a changed person". He found the film Actually Pretty Funny and wished he'd gotten to know him better.
- After meeting with John Ford, Sammy is shown being grateful for the man's tough love attitude and the advice he gives him, happily walking into the sunrise to start his own film career. In real life, Spielberg admitted that he was actually traumatized by the meeting at the time, as he believed that he'd made a fool of himself in front of Ford due to misunderstanding him, not helped by him telling Spielberg to "get the fuck out" of his office shortly after. It wouldn't be until years later that Spielberg realized what Ford's advice meant and that the man was being a Stealth Mentor.
- As You Know: Bennie is introduced at the family dinner table, where Burt casually mentions that Bennie is his best friend.
- Author Avatar: Sammy Fabelman is one for Steven Spielberg.
- Based on a True Story: The movie is a riff on Spielberg's real-life childhood, with particular attention paid to his parents' divorce, his childhood film work, and his early career path, with the details of the people involved roughly accurate. However, there are a number of notable changes made in order to both make it a better story and capture the emotional takeaways a little better.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Reggie, the only Fabelman sibling to wear glasses, is the most consistently level-headed and well-adjusted of the older kids, while also having her moments of cute vulnerability.
- Bilingual Bonus: Just like "Spielberg" has some meanings related to storytelling (it's German for play-mountain, 'spieler' is 'actor' in Yiddish, and a 'spiel' is a speech), "Fabelman" was chosen specifically for featuring the German word for 'fable'.
- Bird-Poop Gag: Sammy's movie of the class trip invokes it, by filming a person lying in the sand, and a person outside the camera's frame dropping vanilla ice cream on their face. In the final film, this was intercut with gulls flying overhead, to make it look as if the ice cream was bird poop.
- Birds of a Feather: Played for tragedy. Despite being an engineer like Burt, Bennie is a very spontaneous and fun-loving man who likes to entertain others, just like Mitzi. This leads to them carrying out an affair. Mitzi tries her hardest to stick with Burt because he is a kind and hardworking man who she knows doesn't deserve what she's putting him through, but she ultimately realizes that Bennie just offers her more emotionally, leading to Burt and Mitzi getting divorced.
- Bittersweet Ending: Burt and Mitzi divorce and split up the family, with Sam going to live with Burt and Mitzi marrying Bennie. However, Burt finally gives his blessing to Sam pursuing a filmmaking career. Sam meets with a staffer at CBS, who says he might eventually have some work available on Hogan's Heroes, and introduces him to director John Ford. Ford offers some rather oblique advice, and Sammy's future in the field looks very bright.
- A Bloody Mess: The three kids pull a prank on their mother involving a yanked-out tooth and a generous helping of ketchup as a stand-in for blood.
- Boyish Short Hair: Mitzi has the late Leah Adler's (Spielberg's mother) Peter Pan-style haircut, which was cutting-edge for women of her generation.
- Bully Brutality: Chad is very casual with his threats of violence towards Sammy, so much so that even Logan has to reign him in periodically. Unlike Logan, Chad doesn't reevaluate himself after seeing Sammy's Senior Ditch Day and attempts to physically assault Sammy.
- Call-Back: When Sam sits in John Ford's office, perhaps not quite yet realizing where he is, he looks around at the movie posters on the wall. The final one he (and the camera) looks at is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which he saw with his friends in an earlier scene. His facial expression and the Record Needle Scratch make it evident that it's really sinking in who he's about to meet.
- Call to Adventure: After the death of Mitzi's mother, the Fabelmans get a visit from Mitzi's uncle Boris, a former lion-tamer and filmmaker. While staying the night in Sammy's room, he says his dad maybe isn't going to understand his art, but people in his family like himself and his mother are good at it, and he's got to pursue it despite the obstacles.
- The Cameo: None other than David Lynch pops up in the end as John Ford.
- Censorship by Spelling: As the Fabelmans drive home from the movie and Burt and Mitzi discuss if it was too much for the young Sammy:Burt: I told you this wasn't a good idea, what with all of his A-N-X-I-E-T-I-E-S.Mitzie: Kids his age have big I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N-S.
- Central Theme:
- Art versus Technology. Sammy's mother is creative and emotional but also rather flighty, while his father is brilliant and responsible but sometimes rather detached. Many the Fabelmans' conflicts are a result of it. Becoming a filmmaker is how Sammy combines the two.
- Masculinity. The role of the male in 20th century society is examined, from positive aspects to toxic. Sammy has a number of key masculine role models in his life.
- Cerebus Call-Back: Sammy's obsession with filming everything he can is initially presented as a quirky hobby of his, but takes on a darker meaning when Burt and Mitzi break the news of their divorce to their children. As his sisters argue with their parents over their split and they try to comfort their children, Sammy dissociates and begins imagining himself trying to film the whole thing from dramatic angles as though he's reducing the trauma his family is going through into nothing more than a spectacle for his camera to capture.
- Cigar Chomper: Ford makes an elaborate show of preparing and lighting his cigar while Sam stands waiting. He smokes and chews on it throughout their conversation.
- Cool Uncle: Sammy's great-uncle Boris is a former lion tamer who has lived an exciting life and even has experience with filmmaking. He also shows support for Sammy's dream.
- Cursed with Awesome: Sammy's filmmaking talents are undeniable, but the movie implies that such a talent leads to heavy dissociation with reality when one's obsession with how things look in a camera can reduce real life tragedies into just drama to capture on film.
- Dies Wide Open: Mitzi's mother Tina dies in her hospital bed with her eyes still open.
- Dodgeball Is Hell: It's volleyball rather than dodgeball, but the spirit is very much the same. Sammy gets a ball deliberately spiked into him during PE by Logan Hall, who has made it his personal mission to make Sammy's life miserable.
- Double Entendre: When they are alone in Monica's room, she talks a lot about being filled with the holy spirit:Monica: Ask him to come into you. Ask him to enter you.
- Establishing Character Moment: In the first scene, both Burt and Mitzi's personalities are demonstrated by how they try to reassure Sammy that there's nothing to be afraid of at the movies, Burt by scientifically explaining how a projector works and Mitzi by comparing movies to dreams.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Jerk Jock Logan has a hanger-on Chad who's an even bigger bully than he is, to the point where Logan has to tell him to back off of Sammy a couple times.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Downplayed. Burt is fairly supportive of Sam's filmmaking... but as a hobby, not a vocation. Mitzi calls this out:Mitzi Fabelman: You dismiss what he does as "playful" or "imaginative" [...] you could afford to be a little encouraging.
- Flipping the Bird: After a moment of truthfulness and understanding, Sam and Logan give each other one in a good-natured parting.
- Foreshadowing: It's not hard to realize Bennie and Mitzi are in love with each other, even before Sammy does. Mitzi being distressed upon moving to Phoenix without him and fighting Burt about it is the first big sign. Likewise, in the scene where she dances in front of the headlights, you can see Bennie watching her with the same adoration that Burt does.
- Fun with Homophones: Monica talks a lot about praying, but she seems more interested in preying.
- Gentile Jew-Chaser: Monica, a devout Christian, is instantly interested in Sammy when she learns from Claudia that he's Jewish (because she loves Jesus, and Jesus was Jewish). The relationship creates not an insubstantial amount of drama.
- Gilligan Cut: Mitzi pleads desperately with her family not to let the wild, eccentric Uncle Boris anywhere near them, as her dreamed warned her. Cut immediately to Boris already seated at the dinner table, happily helping himself to some chicken.
- Heel Realization: Logan has this after watching Sammy's Senior Ditch Day and realize how mean he has been to Sammy. Averted with Chad, who doesn't take the film well and seeks out Sammy to physically retaliate.
- High School: The latter portion of the film has Sam at a new high school in Saratoga, CA, after the family has moved. He has a miserable experience there, being bullied by anti-Semitic jocks.note
- High-School Dance: Sam shows his "Ditch Day" film to the students at the Saratoga High senior prom—right after Monica broke up with him after Sam proposed marriage.
- Honorary Uncle: Bennie is referred to as "Uncle Bennie" despite not being related to either of Sammy's parents. He eventually does become Sammy's stepfather.
- Hope Spot: The move to California and the crowded rental house badly strains Burt and Mitzi's marriage, while Sammy becomes less interested in filming. Then Burt's new job starts going well enough to move into a bigger house, and Sammy (who just rediscovered his love for movies while filming a school event) makes a video of his sisters happily racing around the house and Burt bringing Mitzi inside in a Bridal Carry. The next scene has Burt and Mitzi breaking news of their divorce to the kids.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Sammy tells Claudia that Logan cheated on her with a redheaded girl. Logan punches Sam in the nose and tells him that if he doesn't go back and tell Claudia he was lying, Logan will hurt him worse. Sam duly goes back to Claudia and says he was lying—but Claudia isn't fooled, noting that there was no way Sam could have known Logan's ex-girlfriend Renee has red hair.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: It's implied that Logan has some self-esteem issues, as he takes issue with the borderline-heroic portrayal of himself in Sammy's Ditch Day film, feeling that he can never live up to that in reality.
- Irony: After viewing Sammy's film of the camping trip, Mitzi says, "It's so beautiful, what you made, darling. You really see me." Sammy had carefully edited out from the film what he really saw of his mother.
- Jerkass Has a Point: A humorous example. Despite coming off as grouchy, John Ford gives Sammy good advice on frame making. The last frame's Meta approach shows Ford was right.
- Burt's mom is standoffish towards Mitzi and Bennie. Considering that the two are later revealed to be having a affair, she is right to not like or trust either of them.
- Jerk Jock: At Saratoga High, Sam is relentlessly bullied by a gang of jocks led by Logan and Chad, who hurl anti-Semitic insults. On one occasion Logan punches Sammy in the nose.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: After giving Sammy some tough love and telling him to get the fuck out of his office, John Ford goes back to his cigar. Sammy drops back in to sincerely thank him, and the old man cracks a genuine smile, saying it was his pleasure.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- Sammy and Logan's final conversation is a borderline example of this when Sammy jokingly says no one will ever know of their conversation unless he makes it into a movie.
- The final shot is this with the camera being adjusted the way John Ford had recommended how you should do a camera angle in the previous scene.
- Lipstick Mark: Played for Laughs. When John Ford walks into his office, he has a huge lip-print on his right cheek, and some smeared on his mouth as well. His secretary dutifully pursues him with a handful of tissues and cleans him up before sending Sam in.
- Logo Joke: The Amblin Moon passes by Universal's Earth, making for a seamless transition between logos.
- Long-Lost Uncle Aesop: Uncle Boris barely passes through the film, arriving unannounced and leaving after a single night, but he makes an outsized impact in that brief window. A former circus lion tamer and film worker, he delivers a searingly honest monologue to Sammy about the artist's life, and that family and art will always be "at odds with one another." He's essentially an oracle in an undershirt, there to confirm Sammy's calling and warn him of the cost, and then he's gone.
- Lost in Character: Played for Laughs. While making Sammy's World War II film, his friend Angelo gets so deep into character as he walks off into the distance that he doesn't hear Sammy and the others yelling to him that they've finished the shot and he can come back.
- Malicious Misnaming: The anti-Semitic bully Chad repeatedly calls Sammy "Bagelman." The one time he doesn't is during his Villainous Breakdown.
- Meaningful Name: A kid called Fabelman wants to become a storyteller. The name is also a hidden pun, as Kushner revealed
in interviews.Tony Kushner: "Spielberg" in German means "Play Mountain"; and in German, "der Fabel" is the outline that you make of a play. - Mischief-Making Monkey: Sammy's mother buys one at one point, simply because she "needed a laugh." It immediately climbs on his father's head and wrecks the house. While at times played for laughs, it also stands as a symbol of Mitzi's instability, particularly when she names him Bennie.
- More Experienced Chases the Innocent: Monica, the very religious Christian girl, invites Sam over to pray and to see her shrine to Jesus...and other men she finds sexy. She also "fills him with the holy spirit" via a very Forceful Kiss, then pretty much tosses him onto her bed and pins him to it. He doesn't seem to mind, though.
- Musical Gag: The song on the soundtrack as we open on ditch day (which Sam has agreed to film) is "Goodbye Cruel World" (I'm off to join the Circus). A callback to Uncle Max's speech.
- Mythology Gag:
- A scene in which Sam and his Boy Scout buddies, on bicycles, all turn a corner and swing out onto a street, is highly reminiscent of a shot in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
- Sam and his fellow Boy Scouts exploring the desert calls to mind the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
- The monkey Mitzi buys looks a lot like the Nazi monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Sammy's war film will definitely remind you of Saving Private Ryan.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Sam skipping away down what appears to be the Universal lot, having started his new career in show business.
- Outgrowing the Childish Name: After moving to California, Sam tries to get people to call him "Sam" rather than "Sammy," which he'd always used up to that point.
- Parents as People: Besides Sam, Mitzi and Burt Fabelman are the protagonists of the film, and are suitably complex.
- Burt is an excellent provider and a caring father and husband, but he also doesn't understand Mitzi or Sammy's artistic sides very well, is oblivious to the negative results the family's relocations have on his children, and doesn't have the guts to address his wife's affair.
- Mitzi is a loving mother but simply isn't emotionally satisfied with Burt and is having an emotional affair with his best friend. She's also prone to emotional outbursts and rash decisions that hurt the rest of the family.
- Phone Call from the Dead: Mitzi seems to be receiving one from her mother, warning her about her uncle's visit. It's left unclear as to whether this was simply a bad dream, or a sign of her declining mental health.
- Precision F-Strike: John Ford tells Sammy to "Get the fuck" out of his office.
- Quitting to Get Married: Mitzi quit performing piano professionally to marry Burt. She still does it occasionally, but her doomed dream is one of Sammy's motivators not to end up like her.
- The Reason You Suck: Sammy has one with Logan after Logan sees the movie and calls out for making him look like a hero in the movie:Sammy Fabelman: I wanted you to be nice to me for five minutes! Or maybe I did it to make my movie better. I don't know why. You're the biggest jerk I've ever met in my entire life. I have a monkey at home that's smarter than you! YOU DUMB ANTI-SEMITIC ASSHOLE! ...I made you look like you could fly.
- Record Needle Scratch : As Sam looks around at the movie posters in Ford's office, a slow western tune plays in the soundtrack. When Ford opens the door, the needle scratches loudly and the music stops, as Sam nearly breaks his own neck turning to look at the door.
- Romance-Inducing Smudge: Subverted for maximum cringe when a friend recounts how Sammy had attempted this exact move on a girl, only to discover that what he thought was a smudge on her nose was actually a pimple.
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Claudia, the girlfriend of school bully Logan, is introduced refusing to join in his harassing of Sammy and then believing Sammy and dumping Logan after Sammy reveals he saw Logan cheating on her. After Logan orders Sammy to tell Claudia he lied, she acts angry and hostile at him for supposedly lying for no good reason. However, she quickly admits she knows why he's saying that and that she is just teasing him, feels sorry that Logan beat him up after she left, and introduces him to her friend Monica, who he goes on to date. She does eventually take Logan back, but only after Sammy glorifies him in a documentary in a way which makes much of the school think they're on better terms now.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Downplayed. When Sam starts talking to Burt about the World War II movie he's making, referring to WWII as "your war", Burt quickly changes the subject, and later when somebody asks Sam if it was inspired by his father's stories, Sam says Burt doesn't talk about his service much.
- Shout-Out:
- Bennie puts what looks like a spider under one of the children's plates, which they freak out about, until Bennie puts the "spider" in his mouth and says, "Licorice. If there's anything I'm a sucker for, it's licorice."
- Sam and his friends in Arizona go see The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance at one point.
- Significant Background Event: In-Universe. Sammy is looking at a clip of his home movie of the family camping trip, with his sisters goofing around sword fighting with sticks. He notices, in the background, Bennie and Mitzi briefly holding hands and then Bennie slipping an arm around Mitzi's waist. He realizes that his mother is having an affair.
- Simple, yet Awesome: When watching Sammy's western film for his Boy Scout merit badge, everyone is impressed that Sammy managed to make the actor's toy pistols flash as they fired like real firearms. Sammy explains to his dad that he accomplished this by simply using a pin to poke holes in the film strip so the projector's light would shine through.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Uncle Boris is in the film for only about seven minutes, but his lecture to Sammy about pursuing his art has a lasting impact. He also gets in some memorable lines in such a short span.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: A variation in that the adultery is a serious flaw with terrible consequences but the characters involved with it are sympathetic. Neither Bennie nor Mitzi are bad people despite them carrying out an emotional affair behind Burt's back. Bennie legitimately loves Mitzi's children, and Mitzi has repeatedly attempted to come clean about it to Burt only for him to engage in Oblivious Guilt Slinging every time. Bennie doesn't even hold it against Sammy when Sammy starts giving him the cold shoulder upon finding out, continuing to encourage him to follow his dream of becoming a filmmaker.
- Time Skip: The movie jumps ahead a year during Sammy's early childhood before making a more substantial leap into his teenage years, skipping past a chunk of his formative years to land in the more dramatically fertile territory of high school.
- Took a Level in Kindness: As shown above under Heel Realization, Logan realizes how cruel he has been to Sammy and while he isn't necessarily friends with Sammy by the end, he still reaches an understanding with him and even defends Sammy by punching out Chad when Chad attempts to attack him.
- Two-Timing with the Bestie: Mitzi is having an emotional affair with her husband's best friend and subordinate Bennie.
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": Mitzi buys a pet monkey after the family moves from Phoenix to Saratoga. Naming the monkey "Bennie" causes some tension in the already-stressed household, and she offers to change its name as a placating gesture.
- Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Mitzi slaps Sammy on the back after their argument, and looks horrified. The film doesn't side with her, but she is shown sympathetically.
- You Hate What You Are: When Sammy is ranting about hating Mitzi for her selfishness after his parents announce their divorce, his sister points out that he, of all the siblings, is the most like her by a long shot.