“The Fabelmans”, by Steven Spielberg, the emblematic director of American cinema, is undoubtedly his most personal and intimate film. It is about his childhood and the birth of his vocation as a filmmaker. But above all this work is a wonderful reflection on the powers of the image, and on the way it can influence our perceptions and our memories.
In “The Fabelmans”, Spielberg looks back on his own childhood memories, in a middle-class American family of the 1950s and 60s. Whose real name is Samuel Fabelmans, he is the only boy among four siblings, raised in a warm and loving environment, between an artistic and whimsical mother who was a concert pianist before devoting herself to raising her children, and a father who is an engineer and technophile. It was indeed he who created the GE-225 computer for General Electric in 1959, on which Basic, the very first programming language, was developed, which launched the personal computing revolution. And what is more, he owns a camera with which he enjoys filming his family…
The journey of the young Samuel and the future Spielberg follows 4 stages throughout this magnificent film.
From the image that stuns to the image that heals…
The film opens on the very first cinema screening little Samuel attends, aged six. His parents are very excited at the idea of introducing him to this world, and prepare him for the moment the way we would dream all parents would ! They describe the set-up to him, the darkness of the auditorium, the emotions one can feel, while stressing that all of this is just illusion.
The boy who will become the great Spielberg is then confronted with the first power of the image: that of frightening us! Traumatised by the collision between a train and a car staged in the film he has watched, Samuel has nightmares, becomes anxious, asks for an electric train for his birthday, with which he relentlessly reproduces the scene to tame it better. His father is scandalised that he treats this magnificent technological object he was given in this way, and forbids him the untimely derailments. That is when the mother, sharp as a tack, steps in with the suggestion that will no doubt decide the boy’s future career: why not derail the train one last time in order to film it, then watch the crash as often as he likes so that it gradually loses its toxic power? Samuel then discovers that the image can also heal: this is its therapeutic power. Cinema, both poison and antidote!
From then on, Samuel starts filming a great deal, all the time, imagining scenarios in which he casts his sisters or his scout friends. With tiny means and a great deal of inventiveness, his films are already wonderful! His mother encourages him with great enthusiasm. His father is more divided: for him, cinema should remain a hobby, yet he consistently provides the boy with the technological tools that allow him to move forward and progress in his practice.
The image that reveals
Now a teenager, Samuel goes camping in the wild with his family and a friend of his parents, and films the whole stay from start to finish. When editing these happy moments on his return, he sees in the filmed images what he had not been able to see in reality : the love affair between his mother and this friend, which will devastate the family’s happy balance. The revelatory power of images then causes him so much torment that he puts the camera aside for a while.
The image that lies
Finally, after a move to California, he has difficulty fitting in at his new high school, suffering various forms of bullying. By picking up his camera again to become the “reporter” of the school’s festive day, he regains his composure and self-confidence, and savours an unexpected revenge. He experiences, indeed, the manipulative power of the image… When editing the scenes captured on the spot, he presents one of his bullies as an absolute loser by favouring all the moments where he makes a fool of himself, and the second, a pretty boy with toxic masculinity, as a sort of god of Olympus. The first one’s reaction, to the jeers of the audience, is quite understandable. The second one’s is more unexpected : confronted with a dreamed-of image of himself so perfect that he will never reach it, he flies into a black, destructive rage, which targets himself as much as Samuel Fabelmans, the skilful conductor of this deceitful propaganda.
From Fabelmans to Spielberg
Having experienced over the course of his childhood and adolescence the image that stuns, the one that heals, the one that reveals and the one that lies, Samuel is ready to devote himself to his art. He begins academic studies that he soon abandons and manages to get hired as an assistant in a film studio. There he meets John Ford, played on screen by David Lynch, who gives him, in a few minutes of conversation, a magnificent lesson in cinema. Samuel Fabelmans is armed to become Steven Spielberg…
