No wonder The Fabelmens takes place in the desert

February 08, 2026

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#TheFabelmans #MichelleWilliams #PaulDano #SethRogen #WarOfTheWorlds #TomCruise #DakotaFanning #StevenSpielberg #film #review #movies #cinemastodon

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by Troler

Free Software fundamentally misses the point. It fails on a practical, ideological, economic, and political level. Let’s examine precisely how (in a slightly different order for the purposes of presentation).

6 Minute Read

When I was 5, I looked at the world with wondrous eyes. I saw butterflies flap their wings and wondered how are they able to soar in the air. I saw the world and sought to understand it. The best way to have a comprehension of anything is to experience it. So I did, but the joy I felt wasn't easy to convey. I joked, but no one laughed. I painted, but parents didn't understand. I made films and... they clapped their hands. That sense of the knowing it's possible to package emotions into moving images stayed.

I wasn't the only person with such feelings. Steven Spielberg had undergone something similar. In the year 2022 he directed a film about his own life, in a little known feature The Fabelmans. Although not a full documentary, it's semi-fictional nature was still education. The movie was teaching the audience how to make movies, how a single spark of The Greatest Show on Earth inspired Spielberg to become a director. He saw a train hit an automobile and desired to recreate it. His first film was a recreation of the train scene. My first, still up on YouTube, video is a parody version of Tele Bim Bam song Voras. At that time, I felt the need to sing about about a spider turning into shit, my humor was just like that.

While watching the movie and still being curious about how things operate, I focused more so on Spielberg's technique, the means by which emotion is conveyed. The protagonist Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), a proxy of Spielberg himself, was shown to be quite careful and caring. Carrying the weight of forbidden knowledge, the knowledge of her mother's affection not for her husband Burt (Paul Dano), rather for her friend Bennie Loewy (Seth Rogen), lend to Sam hiding the revealing tape. The same tape which he painstakingly analyzed. Spielberg showed his face in the reflection of the editing machine. It's a technique I've seen in other Spielberg films. His eyes dotted the screen, flipping back and forward in frames, analyzing the moving picture and the truth it holds. All of that revealed by the reflection.

Although the sight is grim, I see hope in the man's eyes. The lighting, the scenery, the posture, all of that paint a picture more complete than a novel.

For instance, the War of the Worlds, where the protagonist Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) in the first arc watches the television and there is a reflection of his face on the screen. One of the channels he happens to flip through was of the train crash scene in The Greatest Show on Earth. With the film being steeped in horror of post 9/11 USA, the tone is darker. It is reflected in the muddy reflection of Ray, Rachel (Dakota Fanning), Harlan (Tim Robbins) in the puddle, as they hide from the monstrous aliens, played by CGI artists. Being able to see character's faces and the object of interest in the same shot is one of Steven Spielberg staples. Arguably, dolly shots of character face of surprise or any other strong emotion is more so iconic, to point of having a name — the Spielberg face.

At this point I am derailing the focus from Spielberg. It is hard for me to not be at awe at his subversive technique of hiding character's pain, in order for the feelings sorrow to amplify. The emotion felt in J. J. Abrams' Spielbergian type of a film about ordinary teenagers making a movie on Super 8 film. A film produced by Spielberg himself, which, without any coincidence, has an automobile crashing into a train, a reference to The Greatest Show on Earth. In Super 8, unlike in The Fabelmens, the plot is less focused on the actual movie production. The protagonist Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) is a also a quite shy and introverted artist, with a hobby of creating his own model trains. His friend director Charles Kaznyk (Riley Griffiths), although admittedly obnoxious, has that eye for emotion. In a shooting of a of husband (Martin (Gabriel Basso)) and wife (Alice (Elle Fanning)) having a last goodbye, there is this conception of establishing love and affection in order to make the loss of individual more heart-wrenching. There is technical skill in how the boy-director Charles composes. That scene has a background character dial the phone. Charles, or less or more directly the director J. J. Abrams, understands the need to make the picture jump out of the frame. That is done either by adding more to the picture or most significantly removing unnecessary details. It's far easier to keep piling up various ideas, it's an art to be able to keep those which matter. That's not to say best movies are bland, no. Rather I argue directors such as Spielberg succeed by showing enough to allow the imagination to fill in the blanks. In a way, the audience is the background character, minding their own business, but being stunned by a story and people we know a fraction of. c:0

I am soon going to turn 20, I'd take 4 times of growing up to age 5 to reach that age. Those 15 were spent growing up as a person in every conceivable way. My curiosity and desire to understand the world only grew as years passed by. I came to be far more proficient at analyzing what I see around me. At the same time, I came to understand the limits of understanding and knowledge as a whole. For that reason, I am now more appreciative of pauses in speech and came to adore Steven Spielberg's decision to hide emotions.

Fin.