SPIELBERGMAN

Having just watched 'The Fabelmans' (2022), I was deeply struck with how Spielberg can never not be Spielberg, just as our own deeply embedded karmic DNA cannot be denied. Even with all the accusations that his critics throw at him about being too overtly emotional and sentimental he always seems to double down with the same conviction in serving his creative raison d'etre as all great artists must. 'The Fabelmans' is no exception to this rule. I like that and never doubted him for a second.

For in the matrix of post, post modernist 'end of history' times our Western culture currently exists in, it's actually reassuring to my mind that Spielberg continues to unapologetically maintain his openly emotional approach to his story telling. It gets him into trouble at times and for both the anti-American/Hollywood and anti-sentimentality brigades (usually they double as one) it is anathema to their belief in a more art house reality where they think European cinema or Independent cinema somehow gets closer to the truth about life than anyone or anything associated with Hollywood. Actually, the truth is that both can be inauthentic for different reasons and both can be true. Once you understand this paradox you can consider yourself a true film lover.

Truffaut made no bones about hailing Spielberg's E.T as the greatest movie ever made back in '82 and I always liked that he could see the film beyond its obvious market success. Just as in my own British society, wealth and aspiration are routinely denounced and seen as a negative in moral terms, so, too, can a mainstream movie's runway success at the box office be seen as a negative in the eyes of the critics who believe like Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus in Ridley Scott's Gladiator that they determine what should be given a thumbs up or a thumbs down in the cultural zeitgeist. But I digress.

Returning to Truffaut for a moment, I was also reminded of his semi-biographical movie about movies 'Day For Night' (1973) as I was Bergman's reflections on his own childhood in his grand film saga 'Fanny and Alexander' (1982) and how many major directors choose to lay down their own unique personal journey/biography as an artist in film form at some (typically later) stage in their career.

I'm mindful not to ruin the film by mentioning any spoilers so, in summary, I would just like to reflect on what it was that personally moved me about 'The Fabelmans'.

Thinking back on two things. Firstly, my Spielbergian-influenced childhood where his films created my first major impressions of sound and light outside of nature and informed my life long desire to work in film (for better or worse). So much of what I saw in his movies became an extension of the reality I existed in as if I'd applied my own Spielberg filter on reality. I probably still use that same filter although I also have a Kubrickian one as well as an Ozu one too.

Seondly, and most importantly, the ever growing realisation that being creative or engaging in some artistic method is a way of processing our own lives and dispersing those distilled lessons of love, loss and happiness with the rest of the world. There's a key scene in The Fabelmans where the father figure insists that his son, Sammy, put together an edit of home movie family footage for his grief stricken mother. Sammy is more interested in preparing to shoot his little war movie with friends than assembling something more personal but ultimately complies to his father's wishes and becomes a better director for it.

Writing one of my Digital Renegade pieces, 'The Streatham Bodhisattva', almost a year ago for my father's 80th birthday I had no idea just how symbolic that humorous essay would be for him personally when he held it close to him in hospital and saw his life's journey reflected in my words.

I may never achieve all I set out to achieve in my own career but if that was the summit of my ability to capture something with my work for someone else then I'll be happy with that. There's nothing more humbling than seeing someone close to death find comfort in the words you've written.

Much like Sammy Fabelman learns throughout the movie, I now realise sometimes the biggest themes in your life are laid out right before you.

And memories, like a flickering movie reel being projected in the darkness of the cinema, can be captured by remembering them in our own unique way.