Is called Steven Spielberg, but his real name is Cinema. More specifically, the Great American Cinema. An equivalence that has been explained for decades, but his new film, The Fabelmans, uplifts and radicalizes in abundance. The long-awaited autobiography of children and young people, presented in the world premiere at the Toronto Festival, where it was triumphantly released, has finally arrived in the Italian premiere Rome Film Festival in cooperation with Alice in towna real diamond in the cap of this edition, a prelude to the big theatrical release scheduled for December 22nd.
The Fabelmans is a film shot in 8, 16 and 35mm extraordinary in the truest sense of the wordbecause (com) brings a wealth of Content related to the cinematic art to absorb and recover its essence, staging the reasons of those who realize it and those who are spectators in space, a place where the collective dream is shared in its supreme celebration. A novel of self-development but applicable to any child/teen determined to fulfill their calling, the film Spielberg is a journey through life as a boy through alter ego Sammy Fabelman, set up as the grand narrative of classic cinema Made in the USA, but also as an intense love story with cinema itself, born with a terrifying and wonderful love at first sight. Sam/Steven opened in 1952 when his parents took him to the cinema for the first time when he was six years old: scenes from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show in the World are shown on the big screen. The child comes out shocked, alarmed and seduced, especially in the scene of the train derailing and colliding with a vehicle. He’d love to do it again with the little train his father (Paul Dano) gave him, but the discovery of being able to film them opens up a very small Super-8 his mother (Michelle Williams) gave him his eyes for No. Don’t be guided by the power of “moving images” anymore.
Who can be seen, checked and checked again, reviving the same emotions to finally fix them in their memories. there “magic box” dTherein lies his great obsession, he makes amateur films with his little sisters (and then spreads to parents, friends, classmates..) as actresses / guinea pigs, rudimentary operettas but already denoting a precise sense of recording, a strong narrative Wisdom, a talent for classical editing. Years go by and Sam/Steven adolescent (the excellent Gabriel LaBelle) arrives in 1964, between moves, breakups, secrets out, disappointments, joys, defeats, in short, what usually happens in any existence, but with one fixed point: everything passes but that Passion for cinema that remains the only certainty.
Written with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, the director’s historical collaborator and Oscar nominee for his scripts for Lincoln and Munich, and photographed by the talent of Janusz Kaminski, The Fabelmans is a profound and very lengthy (over 150 minutes before Joy flying) love letter undoubtedly to the cinema, but also to his family, who in their own way have always encouraged and inspired him: on the one hand the crazy and frustrated pianist mother, on the other hand the engineer father, kind and determined . But this masterpiece is also formally radical and exemplary in terms of meta-cinema, also known as cinema-in-cinema, because every small film that “little” Spielberg shoots is a homage to the different American genres: Western, horror, sci-fi, war, melodrama, comedy, teen film, all in one growing symphony that lets us understand and feel the cathartic and revealing power of self of watching a film where we viewers are mirrored on the big illuminated screen. And again, the inexhaustible magic of the dream, the amazing ability to capture truth through fiction, and finally the power of cinema seen in space as an experience of sharing and community building. Without forgetting a fabulous surprise that ends at the end of an immersion of imaginative emotions that provoke laughter and tears. In short, The Fabelmans is a another dazzling Spielberg masterpiecehis most personal and “cinematic” work to bet on for the next Oscars and the history of American cinema that cannot be ignored.