Fabermann: Cinema is true love

The Fabelmans is a semi-autobiographical film by Steven Spielberg. After watching it in February this year, I posted some thoughts on the social networking site. Organized into an article.

Some people care about the difference between the movie and the real thing. But a movie is a movie, and the difference from the so-called reality is not important. A good movie is when the universe on the screen, where characters, stories, moods, ideas, and styles fit together into a solid whole.

Steven Spielberg’s movies usually give us emotionally charged, but “The Fabelmans” conveys the alienation of the family. Of course there is love, but there is also alienation. In the movie, they withdraw from his life one by one. Instead, he was inspired by a distant relative, the character of Seth Rogen, and John Ford, the great director at the end.

Of course Sammy in the movie loves his family. But movies are true love.

In the last scene where Sammy met the great director John Ford, Gabriel Labelle, who played Sammy, didn’t know who played John Ford until the moment of filming. So a lot of the emotional response is real. Then that passage is exactly what Steven Spielberg heard from John Ford back then.

“Faberman” is a movie about movies, and there are a lot of movies in the movie. The aspect ratio of the first movie “The Greatest Show on Earth” that Sammy watched as a child should be the academy ratio (1.37:1). It may be a mistake to show 1.66:1 in the trailer. Can’t remember if that’s the case with the feature film. The movies Sammy made himself in middle school were college proportions.

“Fabermann” itself was shot at 1.85:1, which is also the most suitable ratio for storytelling. Use the simplest characters and plots to depict the most realistic characters and emotions. Every second of the two and a half hours grabs you. “Guilt is a wasted emotion”. Steven Spielberg is not only young, but even better than his past self.

This is a very restrained film. Some might attribute it to Steven Spielberg’s restraint in filming his own story. I think the white space is well left. And the main axis of this movie is his relationship with the movie. No matter how important family is, it is not as important as the movie (in fact, this point is also emphasized in the movie through character dialogue).