For more than 50 years, Steven Spielberg has made films on every subject imaginable. Sharks, dinosaurs, friendly and less friendly aliens, pirates, spies, soldiers, historical and fictional heroes. There are few directors who have been able to match this set of themes. But one of the subjects Spielberg avoided was dwelling within himself.

So far. “The Fabelmans” is a disarming, at times painfully intimate film about a family closely inspired by the Spielbergs. It is a portrait of the author as a young man that also tells the story of a broken marriage. Sammy Fabelman, played by a teenage Gabrielle LaBelle, is the only child and eldest of Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), who moved from New Jersey to Arizona and then Northern California in the 1950s and 1960s. Sammy discovers his filmmaking vocation – making films at home, at school, and with the Boy Scouts – testifies to Mitzi’s deep unhappiness and Burt’s inability to deal with it.

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