Film Review: The Fabelmans & Glass Onion

Life’s Sweet Mysteries

The Fabelmans & Glass Onion

Film reviews by Marc Glassman

The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg, director & co-script w/Tony Kushner

Starring: Gabriel LaBelle (Sammy Fabelman), Michelle Williams (Mitzi Schildkraut-Fabelman), Paul Dano (Burt Fabelman), Seth Rogen (Bennie Loewy), Judd Hirsch (Boris Schildkraut), Julia Butters (Reggie Fabelman), Jeannie Berlin (Hadddash Fabelman), David Lynch (John Ford)

My track record on picking Oscars isn’t great, as my Classical 96 pal Jean Stillwell can testify, but I’m going on the record now: The Fabelmans will win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Steven Spielberg has made a giant leap at the age of 75, making a truly personal film. Think of it: Hollywood’s greatest entertainer since de Mille creating a work about his strange and moving life while never eschewing the crowd-pleasing skills that have made him the most popular director of the past 50 years. 

If you’re not sure about the claim of Spielberg being the best popular director of the past two generations, consider his filmography: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies. And there are many more. For Spielberg to make a film about his childhood rather than dinosaurs or the Second World War is extraordinary. Most autobiographical films are low budget and truly Indie—Truffaut’s Les quatre-cent coups (The Four Hundred Blows) set the pattern for the genre more than 60 years ago. Spielberg has gone against that humble template in this film, making something grandiose but personal.

The Fabelmans mixes autobiography with sociology, racism, aspiration and pop history of the TV and rock’n’roll age. It’s the story of a Jewish family pursuing the American Dream in the ‘50s and ‘60s, finding success but not without very real problems. When he’s a very young boy Sammy Fabelman, is taken to see de Mille’s Oscar winning The Greatest Show on Earth, which has a train crash scene that inspires him to be a filmmaker. From that point on, he makes 8mm films, living the dream throughout his childhood with his mother and sisters (two at first and eventually three). Sammy adjusts well when the family, including best friend Bennie, leave the East Coast for Phoenix after the dad, Burt, lands a better job. 

Burt is a scientist, who has no understanding of art, although he married and immensely admires his pianist wife Mitzi and loves Sammy. Paul Dano plays Burt as a loveable but blinkered man, who thinks filmmaking is a hobby for Sammy (boy is he wrong!) and doesn’t truly comprehend Mitzi’s desires. The heart of the film is Spielberg’s portrayal of Mitzi, exquisitely played by Michelle Williams. Here we see a woman of talent, held back by motherhood and being a wife. She’s the classic Eisenhower prize, giving her all for the family while denying what she needs to be a fully realized person. Mitzi plays the classical repertoire on the piano—Bach, Haydn, even Satie—quite well. Could she have been a concert pianist? It’s hard to tell but it is obvious that Mitzi gave up the chance when she married Burt.

The third part in the inevitable marital drama that forms much of The Fabelmans’ narrative is Bennie, ostensibly Burt’s best friend and colleague, who means more and more to Mitzi as time goes by. In the film’s best sequence, the Fabelmans go on a camping trip with Bennie as Sammy shoots it all. At his father’s urging, Sammy starts to view the footage in order to make a film and realizes, to his horror, that Mitzi and Bennie are in love. He cuts the film for the family, taking out the revealing material but puts together another reel, which he shows to his mother, to justify his growing hurt and anger towards her. When Sammy shows the forbidden reel to Mitzi, Michelle Williams’ reaction is a study in humiliation, admiration for her son and a civilized restraint. In tears, they come to a new understanding of each other.

Spielberg is famously a director of spectacles. He’s only intermittently effective in emotional scenes, though there have been memorable ones in Schindler’s List, The Color Purple and Lincoln. What works in The Fabelmans is an expression of the unknowable: what a boy’s love means to a mother and vice-versa. It’s impressive that Spielberg is being this honest and vulnerable at this time in his career.

When the Fabelmans move to Northern California, Sammy discovers that anti-Semitism still exists. The scenes that cover Sammy’s encounters with teenaged boys who hate Jews for no rational reason are handled in a frank and brutal manner. It’s shocking to see Sammy brutalized, called a “Christ killer” and referred to derisively as ‘bagelman.” 

Ultimately, Spielberg’s response to his mistreatment will be Schindler’s List, that extraordinary Oscar winning film about the Holocaust, and far more importantly, the USC Shoah Foundation, which he founded and has recorded and archived the testimonies of over 50,000 survivors as well as victims of Rwanda, Armenia, Guatemala and Nanjing. 

It’s easy to talk about Spielberg as a mensch, a lovely person, who has done many good things with his power and money, in addition to his filmmaking ability. But what about The Fabelmans?

The Fabelmans is way long. Really, it’s two stories. One, which is very effective, tells the odd but moving family story, with Mitzi inevitably leaving Burt for Bennie, who truly loves her. As Mitzi, Michelle Williams is brilliant. With the quiet gravity she imparts to every film she’s in, Williams offers the depth needed to make Mitzi Fabelman a character of warmth and integrity who is far more than a quirky, willful individual. She makes you believe that Mitzi fights against her own longings for years, trying desperately not to break up her family, until finally she has to choose a life that she can embrace despite the consequences.

The second story, which is less effective, charts the growth of Sammy Fabelman, boy genius. Even at 75, Spielberg is less good at presenting himself than he is at showing us his mother and father in all of their complexity. Sammy is well played by newcomer Gabriel LaBelle, but the character is a cipher. He’s best when dealing with the mechanics of filmmaking and less effective as the Fabelmans’ boy. Perhaps that’s Spielberg but it doesn’t make for great drama. We like Sammy Fabelman but never really know him.

So, The Fabelmans has flaws, but what film doesn’t? What the film has, in a more modest way than normal for Spielberg, is a wonderful sense of what life was like in America during its golden age of the ‘50s and ‘60s: the cars, the shops, the diners, the clothes, the music, the incredible wealth of it all. It is a straightforward look at being an American Jew at the time, not particularly religious but proud of a heritage that goes back centuries. It’s wonderful to hear Jewish songs and prayers presented in a matter-of-fact way by the Fabelman family without overt sentimentality. The anti-Semitism is devastating to watch—it’s the only truly grim part of the film—and, yet even that is played off the odd but hilarious love relationship between Sammy and an over-the-top Christian girl who tries to “cure” him of being Jewish in a much nicer way than the boys. 

The Fabelmans is, ultimately, a family film—about one that falls apart but with everyone loving each other. It’s complicated but so is life. Spielberg and scriptwriter Tony Kushner have told a complicated tale in a winning manner. This is a film to be embraced by many, and, I believe, an award-winner. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Rian Johnson, writer & director

Starring: Daniel Craig (Benoit Blanc), Edward Norton (Miles Bron), Janelle Monae (“Andi” Bron), Kathryn Hahn (Claire Debella), Leslie Odom, Jr. (Lionel Toussaint), Jessica Henwick (Peg), Madelyn Cline (Whiskey), Kate Hudson (Birdie Jay), Dave Bautista (Duke Cody)

Rian Johnson has pulled off the nearly impossible. With Glass Onion, he’s created a sequel, which is considerably better than the original Knives Out. Again, starring Daniel Craig as the brilliant detective Benoit Blanc, a daffy variation on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, this stylish mystery starts off with Miles Bron (Edward Norton), an Elon Musk-esque zillionaire sending a brilliant puzzle to an apparently disparate group of people. They include Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a YouTube star and men’s rights activist and his beautiful assistant, Whiskey (Madelyn Cline); Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), a supermodel who has become a very opinionated fashion designer and her assistant, Peg (Jessica Henwick); an American politician, Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), who is running to be a Senator; a scientist, Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom, Jr.) who works for Bron and “Andi” Bron (Janelle Monae), his brilliant ex-wife. Blanc also receives a puzzle, which is baffling because Bron didn’t intend to have him get one.

The puzzle turns out to be just one of many mysteries that unfold in this funny and cleverly constructed film. When solved, its prize is an invitation to Bron’s island, where his glorious post-modern mansion Glass Onion is the dominant architectural conceit. When the group arrives, they’re informed by the charismatic and arrogant Mr. Bron that the weekend has a theme: finding out who has killed him. The fact that he isn’t dead yet poses more problems: how will he be murdered and why is Bron so amused by his impending demise?

The great fun in the first half of Glass Onion is watching Bron’s intricate puzzles being explored and solved. We’re invited to an elaborate dinner party and see the over-the-top characters sparring with each other while wallowing in the midst of luxury. Lovers of Agatha Christie and the cozy mysteries of the past will enjoy the setup enormously. They’ll also find Bron’s guests to be fascinating in their frankly over-the-top characterizations: Duke Cody is just too macho; Birdie Jay is ludicrously narcissistic; Claire Debello is the epitome of the phony politician and “Andi” Bron, haughty and angry. All are outdone by Miles Bron, who makes Musk and Zuckerberg look to be positively humble in comparison to him, his art collection and overtly exquisite Glass Onion of a building. 

There are two major genres of mysteries, the cozy and the hard-boiled. Johnson is a master of both. In the second half of the film, he drops the puzzles and gives us the real goods: why people commit crimes. There’s an extended flashback in which we find out the realistic backgrounds of the people we’ve seen and somewhat despised for the first hour of film. Genuine emotion is evoked—especially anger—as we discover who they all are, especially “Andi,” who has been betrayed by all of her former friends. At this point, Glass Onion, which is great fun at first, develops a heart and a spine.

Miles Bron calls his former friends “The Disruptors,” a term that is so anarchical that both the right and left wings in global politics embrace. To be frank, disruption is endorsed when parties are out of power but not so much when they have control of the government and the economy. When Miles Bron burns up the solution to the final mystery, he—like most figures in power—is not prepared for a true disruption. But what happens is the right ending for the film.

In Glass Onion, Rian Johnson explores the limits of the detective tale. His film, benefits from great performances by Janelle Monae, Edward Norton and Daniel Craig. Best of all, it explodes genre expectations, offering a needed satirical look at the false society we’re living in today. This is a film to be seen and savoured.