What filmmaking techniques does The Fabelmans use?

CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Fabelmans (2022): Autobiographical Distance, Innocent Eye Narration, Character Through Action Introduction and Leitmotif.

Who directed The Fabelmans?

Steven Spielberg directed The Fabelmans, released in 2022. CineCode also covers Duel (1971), Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

What films are similar to The Fabelmans?

Films that share techniques with The Fabelmans include The 400 Blows (1959), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Get Out (2017), Black Swan (2010).

Drama

The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg, 2022

A fictionalized account of Steven Spielberg's childhood. The son of a computer engineer and a concert pianist discovers cinema as a way of coping while his family falls apart. This is Spielberg's most personal film. It is about filmmaking, and it uses filmmaking to make its point.

3 Narrative 1 Sound

At a glance

The Fabelmans is a 2022 drama film directed by Steven Spielberg. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (3 narrative and 1 sound), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, The 400 Blows uses several of the same techniques.

Narrative

Autobiographical Distance

Drawing on the filmmaker's own life but keeping it at arm's length, often through a fictional stand-in. The result is precise and unsentimental, and it can question how memory flatters us.

How this film uses it

Spielberg films his own childhood under different names. Turning it into fiction gives him the distance he needs to look at painful material. The Fabelmans is more honest about his parents' marriage, and about his own part in the family's problems, than an autobiography could be. That is, the fiction is how he gets to the truth.

Where to see it

Sammy discovering his mother's affair through the footage he shot. Spielberg examines a wound from his own life through the act of filmmaking. Making it fiction is what lets him face it.

Narrative

Innocent Eye Narration

Having a narrator describe events in a plain, matter-of-fact way, sometimes without fully understanding them. You notice more than the narrator says, which creates irony and sympathy.

How this film uses it

Sammy Fabelman sees everything through the camera and understands only what a child can understand. The film lets you see what Sammy is too young to fully take in (the marriage's failure, the mother's needs, the father's obliviousness). It also stays true to how a child really experiences a family collapsing, which is in fragments and vague feelings.

Where to see it

Sammy watching the camping footage. The child recorded it innocently, and an adult eye reads something different in it. Sammy is gathering evidence he can't interpret yet.

Narrative

Character Through Action Introduction

Introducing a character by showing them in action or at work before any explaining dialogue. You learn their skill, fears, humor and values by watching what they do.

How this film uses it

From his first encounter with a camera, Sammy is defined by what he does with one. After seeing a train crash in a movie, he stages one with his toy train, and his mother suggests filming it so he can watch it again and again. That moment introduces the character and states the film's main idea: for Sammy, making images is how he makes sense of the world. Spielberg introduces himself through the one compulsion that defines him.

Where to see it

The train crash recreation. Sammy films the toy train crash with his father's camera. The action shows you how the filmmaker's mind works before anyone has said the word 'cinema'.

Sound

Leitmotif

Repeating a short piece of music or a sound every time a certain character, idea or feeling comes up. You learn to connect the 2.

How this film uses it

A leitmotif is a musical theme tied to a person or a feeling. John Williams's score relies mostly on piano. Mitzi's piano playing stands for artistic passion, and the music carries what the dialogue can't.

Where to see it

The piano music. It is tied to Mitzi's musical identity. Here, the music carries what the dialogue can't.

Questions

The Fabelmans: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does The Fabelmans use?: CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in The Fabelmans (2022): Autobiographical Distance, Innocent Eye Narration, Character Through Action Introduction and Leitmotif.
Who directed The Fabelmans?: Steven Spielberg directed The Fabelmans, released in 2022. CineCode also covers Duel (1971), Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
What films are similar to The Fabelmans?: Films that share techniques with The Fabelmans include The 400 Blows (1959), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Get Out (2017), Black Swan (2010).

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