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Steven Spielberg knew howThe Fabelmanswould end decades ago.
The Fabelmansbegins with Sammys family living in a close-knit Jewish enclave in New Jersey.
With time, it also becomes the only avenue for him to understand his parents.
Does Burt know how close Mitzi and Bennie are?
Sammy is mostly oblivious, partially because hes too busy making homemade westerns with his friends to notice.
The truth, revealed in an immaculate circle pan, nearly shatters the young filmmaker.
(LaBelle is devastating in this scene where the character and directors real-life pain blend together.)
Film can often demand uncommon honesty or coat facts and people in a gauzy mythology.
The Fabelmanscomprehends how movies can reshape reality, making it kinder and softer than our waking moments.
Sammy, meanwhile, struggles to dodge the antisemitic bullies at his new school.
One in particular, a jock named Logan (Sam Rechner), nearly breaks Sammys nose.
The footage shakes Logan, who cant comprehend how the film made him something hes not perfect.
Sammy, initially, cant understand it either.
Its all an artfully calibrated hagiography where greatness was always assured because the camera made it so.
The director has drawn from his parents separation in several previous films.E.T.
But Sammy and Burt remain together.
They occupy a modest and bare Los Angeles apartment while Sammy searches for an entry point into Hollywood.
The secretary tells Sammy itll be a while before the director returns.
And he doesnt disappoint.
Ford, played by Lynch, barges through the door, his face covered in lipsticked kisses.
Lynch, a brilliant filmmaker in his own right, plays the craggy auteur as loud and brash.
Its pitch-perfect casting that only deepens the films layers between reality and fiction, character and persona.
Lynchs deliberately awkward stillness only builds the anticipation.
Youre just waiting for something outrageous to spring from his lips.
He points Sammy to a painting and asks him to describe it.
Sammy stammers as he explains the scene of two men on horseback.
But Ford doesnt want to talk about whos in the frame.
The perspective in each of them is either in the extreme lower or upper third of the frame.
If the horizons at the bottom, its interesting.
If the horizons at the top, its interesting.
If the horizons in the middle, its boring as shit.
Now, good luck to you.
And get the fuck out of my office.
A director, Spielberg, is born.
