The Fabelmans- Immortalising Pain for Pleasure
The other day The Fabelmans had its 2nd anniversary and I felt obligated to rewatch it. It burnt itself into my memory the first time I had seen it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Steven Spielberg and his movies have partly shaped me into the person I am today and most probably the kind of filmmaker I will become in the future. If you yourself are yearning for a life filled with art, this is exactly the kind of film you ought to be watching. If you, like me, are begging life to give you even just a glimpse of what it could be like to dive head first into the world of filmmaking, then please watch this movie.
Steven Spielberg you are an absolute genius. Words cannot express how thankful I am for this movie and all the other countless motion pictures that have shaped who I am, who I was and who I will become. Film is the love of my life, nothing comes close to it; so to have a character like Sammy Fabelman express exactly that sentiment meant a lot to me.
No one else but Sammy seems to understand how important movies are to him. The moving picture entices him, he desires to be remembered and to remember. There is unspoken beauty in creating something out of nothing, out of stills, glueing them together so they became something worth remembering. A picture says more than a thousand words and yet a motion picture takes care of memorialising every word ever thought.
It is everything Sammy can think about at all times, equipment to make more of his little movies is all he uses his money for. When confronted by his dad who makes it out to just be another hobby, something he will lose interest in over time, our young protagonist puts his foot down and aggravatingly answers: “It is not a hobby dad.” No one understands how much the movies mean to him. How could they? They wouldn’t even listen to their own callings most of the time. His father declares films as being stupid, he dismisses them as being imaginary, but isn’t that exactly what makes movies so enchanting?
Our protagonist tries to tell stories with his movies and he seems to be the only one to understand the true meaning behind them. It feels so alienating when you are the only one to understand the vision or see lived life differently. As the film progresses the others slowly start to understand the power of the moving picture, they begin appreciating what he’s trying to say and show, they understand the magnitude of immortalising stories for future generations.
A true artist pays attention to the smallest details, elements others will dismiss as they don’t think they might have a purpose. The danger with getting lost in a world that isn’t yours is that you seem selfish as you only pay attention to stories that you think should be materialised and letting life slip by simultaneously. You get torn in two, trying to make art and be art at the same time. As Sammy’s uncle Boris says to him: “We are junkies, art is our drug. Family we love but art, we’re meshuga for art.” We go crazy for art, it hollows us out from the inside. Spending all this time creating art in order to feel less lonely and speak to strangers, we become exactly that: lonely and deserted by the ones we love the most. “Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on earth, but… it’ll tear your heart out and leave you lonely… Art is no game…” Whilst that is true I think it is important to note that artists always find each other. It is as if artists are destined to meet and feel less lonesome when with each other because it is then that they finally realise, art is love and pain. Every single person could become an artist. Art brings so much pain that at times you think letting go of creating it can save you from impending doom. That doom will come anyway so why not do what you love, why not be an artist and use that doom to create a world for oneself that doesn’t leave you sad at the end of the day. Everyone is aware of the power the movies have over Sammy, they come to learn how shallow life would become if he stopped telling his stories through the moving picture. Sammy wanting to quit movies wouldn’t just break his heart, it would eventually break everyone else’s too. Just think about yourself for a moment, the light you send out into the world steadily getting dimmer as you stop creating your films, your stories, your paintings. Your loved ones might sometimes hate that you only ever think about art but they will also always make sure to let you know that the world around you loves the artist.
Sammy experiences escapism provided through making movies: The act of just turning on the camera calms him; the rattling of the film washing out all the other noises. Time stands still as the film is playing on the silver screen, making it possible for reality to slip away at least for a while.
One scene that burnt itself into my mind is the parents declaring their separation to their children. Sammy had already connected the dots and knew it was coming so his character takes a step back, becomes a shell of himself just observing how his sisters might react to the divorce. That is until the young man fantasises about getting out his camera to capture the scene currently taking place in their living room. A second Sammy is seen in the mirror filming as his sisters are losing their minds.
The camera acts as his trusted companion, his best friend. To watch a scene like that as a future filmmaker rewires your brain chemistry forever. To see the hurt in his eyes once he realises he’s trying to turn what is happening, not just to him but everyone around him, into a film. The camera protecting himself from truly feeling what he should be feeling in that moment: sadness, anger, hopelessness… He starts turning the fight into something one could see in the movies, a fictional one. At the end of the day it is a great performance, although performance would maybe be the wrong word as his family is showing their true feelings and not performing for him. Filming it means he doesn’t have to deal with it right now, it can stay on film for a while and thus be edited later, or it will never be revisited. What a hard wrenching paradox of immortalising one’s pain and struggle and yet pushing it away at the same time. And yet this is something every artist does. It sometimes hurts when you’re experiencing emotional distress and think to yourself ‘I could do something with this’ instead of just letting the feelings play out and relaxing for a bit, feeling the feelings that need to be felt at that exact moment.
But we are immortalising something so it loses its gravity and just becomes another fictional story in one’s life. Simply something you’d see on screen in a movie. A scene hitting a bit too close to home as that is exactly what it was. A scene playing out in your home, you were there but at the same time you lost your footing and fell into a hole that doesn’t let you differentiate between fiction and harsh reality. You struggle with a yearning to let go of one’s own emotions and using them to make a movie so others can work through theirs and feel understood by a stranger.
The Fabelmans opens up wounds you thought you had closed. It doesn’t necessarily rip them open but the movie aids in opening up a wound destined to become a scar because it didn’t heal properly, just so it can heal eventually.
The other day on Twitter I had seen a Tweet explaining why exactly Sammy got graced with that name. Spielberg’s grandfather made a habit of calling him Samuel, affectionately that is, but Spielberg felt ashamed by the name since it sounded “too jewish” and would get him bullied in school if anyone were to find out. Giving the titular character a name you once denied, gives it more emotional depth because he finally accepted a part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone else because he was scared of how they’d react. In old age he finally realises that his younger self shouldn’t need to be hidden and that he should be proud of the accomplishments. The denying of a part of you squeezes out too much energy, especially if you hide it for decades. Rather than forgetting who he was back then, Steven Spielberg eternalised his younger self and made sure to keep the memory of Sammy alive. He finally engulfed him in a hug and made sure his younger self felt seen and immortalised.
If art is all you think about, then you my friend are going to be an exceptional creative, a creative who will hurt themselves anew only to create a piece of art that could save someone else’s life.
Art is a vessel, it is a never ending wonder and we need to protect it and especially the artists.
When I say I love a film like The Fabelmans I come across people asking me if I just enjoy being hurt as if there was a masochistic tendency in people who just like to know that pain inflicted on oneself can always be healed. It is not about wanting to be hurt by art, it is about acknowledging the fact that: pain might get immortalised but at the same time it will get dismembered, scattered into pieces so you can understand exactly what had gone wrong and how to compartmentalise it. By eternalising pain and trauma in movies you take its power little by little, until no trauma of your own is left. It is as if the pain is trapped in the movie and cannot hurt you anymore. A movie marked by someone else’s negative emotions functions as an anchor for oneself. Spielberg made this motion picture to take the weight off his shoulders and invite other people to do the same. The movie is emotional to a fault but it gets even more emotive as you put your sentiments into the scene. You create a bond with the titular characters because you know exactly what it might be that they’re feeling and by doing so you’re letting go of the pain you had once banished to the part of you that you tried so hard to hide.
The ending of the film is so poignant. I genuinely do feel so seen. Sammy walks into an unknown future but he is running towards art no matter at what cost. He is using his fear to move forward step by step.
A filmmaker is a keeper and mediator of feelings, a creative who makes something out of nothing, a person who delves into stories and gives an outlet to the ones who can’t explain themselves. A filmmaker is the king or queen of the world when their dreams finally become a reality.
I have had people tell me ‘I breathed film’, it is always a bittersweet compliment as I really do but to some extent it is eating me alive. Yet the fear of being eaten by film or my creations isn’t even half as big as the anxiety of not having created art that I and future generations can look back on in the first place. Art is a drug, it is absolute pain but we are ready to take it on because art is simultaneously an anchor grounding us in reality.
To all the fellow Sammy Fabelmans in this world, I hope you make it. Even more so because I would love to work with you in the future. “Guilt is a wasted emotion.” Don’t feel guilty for feeling and don’t feel guilty for making movies about your feelings. Create, create, create. You will hate yourself if you don’t.
Film is immortal. Film is art.