By Stuart Adelberg
Taste in art, as in food, is personal. We each feel what we feel, no explanation needed. While I crave (too many!) specific foods those very same foods completely turn off someone else. Our reactions don’t mean that the chef who prepared the food was unskilled in the kitchen – they just evoked completely different feelings in different people. The same can be said about our reactions to art.
I recently wrote about a film that I considered exceptional in terms of cinematography, writing, acting, direction, etc. Some members of the Avon audience felt this was one of the best films they had seen in a long time. I thought it worthy of accolades, but I wouldn’t necessarily have called it one of my personal favorites. I then spoke with other people who didn’t seem to like the film at all. Same movie, same theatre – completely different reactions! This is not that unusual, particularly when a filmmaker takes a unique risk with some element of the film. In this case, it was the story. It intrigued some, disappointed others!
Last weekend, I saw a film so outstanding that I wondered if it might transcend major differences in taste. THE FABELMANS is Steven Spielberg’s latest release and I give it my most enthusiastic recommendation. Spielberg’s talent as a compelling storyteller is in full display with this wonderful, semi-autobiographical film and, notwithstanding the array of different tastes, I am confident that it will have broad appeal to people of varied perspectives.
THE FABELMANS is a film about many distinct subjects, yet it deals with each of them so beautifully that individual moviegoers could each describe it in their own unique way, while still being completely accurate. This is a coming-of-age tale of a young man growing up with typical challenges while discovering and exploring his personal passions. It is the story of a family growing together and then sadly growing apart. It is a film about filmmaking, and the extraordinary way the cinema has of transporting filmmakers and viewers from their daily concerns into other worlds. In my opinion, it is above all else, a film about following your dreams wherever they take you, even if this means you may have to push aside the judgements and advice of people you genuinely love and respect.
While I won’t get into the story and ruin it for future audiences, I found myself touched by the film’s many quotable lines, each one revealing its major themes. In one scene the young filmmaker’s uncle explains the irresistible pull of art. “Do you think I wanted to stick my head into the mouth of lions?” he asks. “Sticking your head into the mouth of a lion was art?” “No making sure the lion doesn’t eat my head is art!” Encouraging the young hero to follow his heart, his mother says, “You don’t owe anyone your life, not even me.” I am admittedly a sucker for a quotable line!
I am sure that Spielberg has been subject to vagaries of taste, like every other director, throughout his prolific career. After all, how does one even categorize the works of the artist who brought us Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Schindler’s List, West Side Story, and countless others too varied in substance and style to list. I place THE FABELMANS right up there with some of Spielberg’s best – and after seeing it at the Avon, I hope you will too! As the man said, “Movies are dreams that you never forget.”
