The Fabelmans packs all Steven Spielberg’s magic into telling his own story

polygon.com:

Polygon has a team on the ground at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, reporting on the horror, comedy, drama, and action movies meant to dominate the cinematic conversation as we head into awards season. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s TIFF premiere.

In an age obsessed with character origin stories, the early word on Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical movie The Fabelmans made it look like he was out to join the cinematic trend. But his crowd-pleasing, coming-of-age-tale doesn’t fit neatly to that box, or any other. His deeply personal narrative isn’t wholly an autobio, a greatest-hits replay of a singular filmmaker’s career, or a cliché ode to moviemaking. The Fabelmans is a vulnerable reach into the past, to heal a wound that seems to still be as tender as the day it opened decades ago, in spite of the bursts of comedy and the measured ruminations on display.

Because at the heart of nearly every Spielberg film is the spirit of a boy, still saddened by his parents’ divorce, papering over his grief in cinema’s vast sandbox. You can see that kid’s pain unconsciously spilling out in the bickering mom and dad characters from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It springs forth in the family dynamics ofE.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial. And it evolves in Catch Me If You Can, as Frank Abagnale seeks refuge at the home of his mom’s second family. But Spielberg has never approached his own childhood with such straightforwardness as he does in this newest film.

At times, The Fabelmans feels more like an idealized daydream of what could’ve happened to him, which often sands off the real-world edges and the pure anger that he have felt as the son of divorced parents. This isn’t a confessional