Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Fabelmans Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 9, 2023

The Fabelmans is the semiautobiographical biopic centered on Steven Spielberg, who many would argue to be the most popular, one of the most influential, and perhaps the finest filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century. Spielberg, along with longtime collaborator Tony Kushner, co-wrote the film, which Spielberg also directed. The film centers around a young Spielberg, as Sammy Fabelman (played by both Gabriel LaBelle and Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord), and his experiences in life and the birth and development of his lifelong love for the film medium. The film weaves together several narrative elements that explore the boy's influences both behind the camera and before the march of life as he enters into adulthood and a career that came to reshape the cinema landscape forever.

Sammy Fabelman's parents, Burt and Mitzi (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams) change his life's trajectory when they take him to see The Greatest Show on Earth. Trains, and train crashes in particular, then obsess him. Rather than continuously wreck his models, his mother secretly permits him to film a train wreck using his father's camera so he can relive the experience over and over again. Gradually, Sammy's passion turns to filmmaking. He becomes ever more skillful and delights audiences with every amateur movie he makes. Meanwhile, his life evolves around him, particularly as his mother deals with declining mental health and as both external and internal influences threaten to tear the family apart.

Spielberg assembles a masterwork of narrative construction in which the film world and the real world intersect not only through what young Sammy's lens sees, but how it reflects his life beyond the mere capture of a moment. One of the film's key plot points, it would seem, is as much in how Sammy edits the films as the way he shoots them. His life is constantly, and often uncontrollably, evolving around him, but he finds control in how he can tell the stories he builds. That is vital in the character's growth and in the overall, and overarching, family dynamics that are just at the center of The Fablemans as Sammy's growing love for, and skill in, the filmmaking process. Sammy's films always, in some way, reflect his personal state, express his emotions, and offer him opportunity to explore his world, outside of his body and within his heart and mind, with a careful precision that real life cannot offer. The film's best moments, then, come in the intersection of life and film.

Sammy’s story largely focuses on his father and his mother in his more formative years, the former of whom is a workaholic concerned only with his own upward mobility regardless of what his career means to his family’s happiness and togetherness, and the latter of whom grows increasingly distant for several reasons which the film explores in due time and in fairly expressive content both within the film proper and through the lens of Sammy’s camera. In the second half of the film, the story shifts to Sammy’s life as both a high school student and a promising filmmaker. It explores his time involved with a first love interest and it also deconstructs his Jewish heritage: how it comes under attack at a new school and how Sammy once again turns to film to deal with the emotional burdens of the life he’s living. The sense of seamless balance between the delicate nature of Sammy’s life and its emotional reflection in film is quite superb, telling not only Spielberg’s own life story but also opening the film medium itself for reflection and its artistic merit not as simply a collection of moving still images but also as a depiction of how the human heart and soul can be transcribed, defined, and molded by it.

The Fabelmans Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Universal releases The Fabelmans to Blu-ray with a near picture-perfect 1080p transfer. The image never disappoints, offering stable, sturdy details and excellent clarity across the board, allowing audiences to soak in core facial details but also the complexities of period attire and period details with absorbing ease. That sense of access into the world is vital to the film, and the transfer is well up to the task of bringing it all to rich, effortless life on the screen. Color accuracy is excellent, too, with bold primaries and well-balanced support hues at work in every frame. Clothes again star, but so too do natural greens. Flesh tones look healthy and accurate. Black levels depth is excellent, and whites are brilliant. The image does retain a little noise, but such is not problematic to the image. This is a fine release from Universal.

The Fabelmans Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Universal releases The Fabelmans to the Blu-ray format with a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 lossless soundtrack; neither this nor the companion UHD offer Dolby Atmos audio. As it is, the 7.1 track is more than sufficient for the presentation. Beyond a few moments of amplified audio, such as two key early film scenes (the model trains maneuvering through the speakers, a tornado blowing about the soundstage), the track offers more or less straightforward audio elements, with centered and clear dialogue and well-defined music. Musical definition, depth, and spacing are excellent, with the latter particularly impressive for both front side stretch and surround envelopment. Certainly, some more densely packed scenes, including the beach and dance scenes later in the film, offer some impressive envelopment, but rarely is the track called upon to work in heftier, meatier content. The presentation satisfies overall, and it is doubtful that Atmos would have added anything beyond a mild sense of added spatial immersion.

The Fabelmans Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of The Fabelmans contains three extras. A DVD copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• The Fabelmans: A Personal Journey (1080p, 11:00): Exploring project origins, the merging of reality and fiction, the need for the film to be relatable to all viewers, the depiction of a Jewish household in the film, Spielberg's relationship with his parents, and more.
• Family Dynamics (1080p, 15:28): Casting the main roles, the reasons for the casting, and the qualities the actors brought to the story and the film.
• Crafting the World of The Fabelmans (1080p, 22:04): Production design details, costumes, the cameras seen throughout the film, editing, making the beach and prom sequences, crafting a key scene on the one-year anniversary of Arnold Spielberg's death, the John Ford scene, John Williams' work on the film, and more.

The Fabelmans Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Spielberg's The Fabelmans pushes the filmmaker to capture movie magic from a different perspective. Though low on spectacle, the film is big on narrative and offers a substantial commentary on the filmmaking process, which is interwoven into his lead character's life. It's an incredible journey through life and cinema that will delight not only fans of the filmmaker but also fans of the medium. Universal's Blu-ray is excellent, offering high quality video and audio presentations in addition to several extras. Very highly recommended.