Steven Spielberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berlin International Film Festival yesterday, and his new autobiographical film "Dream House" was also unveiled in Berlin. After the screening, 36 of the 40 media gave the film a full score of 5 stars, and 6 gave 4 stars, and finally "Dream Maker" received a super high score of 4.9 points. Today, we borrow an interview with "The House of Dreams" to see where Spielberg's genius came from and what made him finally achieve such achievements.
"Dream House"
The Fabelmans
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Steven Spielberg / Tony Kushner
Starring: Michelle Williams / Paul Dano / Seth Logan / Gabe LaBelle / Mateo Zorion Francis de Fort
Genre: Drama
Country/region of production: United States
Language: English
Release Date: 2022-09-10 (Toronto Film Festival) / 2022-11-23 (USA)
Run time: 151 minutes
Also known as: The Fabelmans
introduction
Steven Spielberg is now 77 years old, he has covered almost all film genres, and his imagination and fairy tale color in movies have always been talked about. And where his authorship comes from, Spielberg rarely mentions. Until the release of the latest autobiographical film "Dream House" directed by him in 2022, we can finally glimpse the source of his genius. Today, with the help of an interview with Spielberg, we come into the film together. See how the pandemic has made him look back, how he confronted painful family secrets, and the question of what it means to be Jewish in America today. In addition, in the face of the rise of streaming media under the epidemic and the audience gradually leaving the cinema, Spielberg also gave his concerns and hopes. In the list of Oscar nominations announced a few days ago, "Dream House" received 7 nominations. After "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan", will Spielberg win the third Oscar for Best Director of his career? We'll see.
Published: 2022.11.9
Originally written by Chantal Anderson
Original address:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/movies/steven-spielberg-the-fabelmans.html
Translator: Xu Jiawei
Suddenly a person, how to control?
Steven Spielberg
Over the past fifty years, Steven Spielberg has made movies about almost everything under the sun—sharks, dinosaurs, friendly and unfriendly aliens, pirates, spies, soldiers, archetypal and purely fictional heroes. Few directors have reached Spielberg's breadth. However, there is one area that Spielberg has always avoided, and that is his personal life.
"Dream House"
Now, that has finally changed. Based on the Spielbergs, "Dream House" is a private film that tells a family story that opens up to the audience and is sometimes heart-wrenching. It depicts both the teenage years of a filmmaker and a marriage that is gradually falling apart. Sammy Fabelman, played by Gabe LaBelle, is the eldest and only son of Micky (Michelle Williams) and Bert (Paul Dano). They kept moving in the fifties and sixties — from New Jersey to Arizona to Southern California. As Sammy discovers his love of cinema (making films at home and with Scouts at school), he also witnesses Mickie's deepening pain and Burt's powerlessness.
"Dream House"
Co-written by Spielberg and his old partner Tony Kushner (the two collaborated on Munich, Lincoln and West Side Story), "Dream House" takes Spielberg into a narrative field that has not been covered. This month, I had a video call with him, both to retrace his personal past and to talk about the film's present and future. The following conversations have been edited and condensed.
Steven Spielberg
NYTimes：
Dream House is obviously about many years ago, and I'm curious about what ultimately made you decide to tell it.
Spielberg:
It wasn't until the pandemic started that I really started thinking about making movies about those pasts.
In the early days of the pandemic, several of my children returned home from the East Coast and occupied their old bedrooms, and Kate and I brought in a lot of family. I can't work, which makes me very uneasy. Directing is a social job, I'm used to interacting with people every day, and I'm not very comfortable meeting people through Zoom now.
Steven Spielberg and family
I have a lot of time. I used to drive hours around San Francisco, along the Pacific Coast to Calabasas, and near 29 Palms. It gives me more time to think about what's going on in the world.
I began to wonder, what stories do I have to tell (or I'll be angry with myself) but haven't told yet? And the answer to that question is always the same: stories where I was growing up between the ages of 7 and 18.
NYTimes：
You've made movies about family before, you've filmed suburban childhood, and it's also about divorce. Yet you never really draw on your own life experiences. Is it tough for you to do so?
Spielberg:
"Third Contact" is about a father who voluntarily leaves home in order to chase his dreams, paying the price of losing his family. "E.T. Alien" is about a child who needs to fill the gap in his life caused by his separation from his family, and metaphorically, it is a slimy little creature from outer space who helps him heal his wounds.
However, the story of The Dream Maker will no longer involve metaphors. It's about a real past, and the hard part is realizing that I may have to tell about it. In theory, discussing the script with Tony Kushner was not difficult, and I asked him: Can you help me weave those scattered but interesting experiences into an integrated film narrative?
Tony Kushner with Steven Spielberg
However, when we actually started writing the script—Tony was in New York, and I was in San Francisco, and we were discussing it via Zoom—those fragments of memory literally came to my eyes, as if they were within reach and filled my mind. Writing a script starts to get really tough.
We couldn't hold someone's hand over Zoom, but as we began to dig deep into my life moments and talk about the secrets between me and my mother that I never said, Tony was always good at giving me the comfort I needed. I've never talked about it in my autobiography (and I haven't written it) or in a movie, and now we've finally reached this fragile trench.
NYTimes：
You've discussed Jewish ethnicity in previous games, such as Schindler's List and Munich. But this is the first time you've specifically touched on the Jewish life experience in the United States.
Spielberg:
I didn't experience antisemitism when I was growing up in Arizona, but I experienced quite a bit when I was in high school in Southern California.
Friends always called me by my last name, so when they shouted "Hey! Spielberg! This Jewish voice echoed in my ears, and I became very conscious of this Jewish identity. Being a Jew in America is not the same as being a Jew in Hollywood. If you're a Jew working hard in Hollywood, when you want to enter a mass circle, you can immediately be accepted into that circle like me, because Hollywood is very diverse and there are many Jews here. However, when I tinkered with those 8mm videos at school, my friends thought it was weird at first, because no one had done it before.
Steven Spielberg
At that time, there were no cameras, except for a Japanese-made 8mm camera, but it was usually kept by parents and only used for family short films or similar films. But I had a camera that helped my social life, and I was able to get along with sporty, most popular classmates who all wanted to be in my films.
In a way, this camera is my social passport. I'm passionate about storytelling, but I'm also passionate about belonging to a life that never invites me. So shooting those little clips was like some kind of magic potion for me.
NYTimes：
In the film, anti-Semitism is like a specter of eventual expulsion, which reflects the mentality of many Jewish Americans at the time, which was optimistic about their future in the United States.
But the situation is different, and anti-Semitism seems to be resurgently harmful again.
Spielberg:
Antisemitism returns only when it is agitated. If it hasn't really recovered, it's because it has continued to weaken over the past few decades. However, an ideology of racial division, racial discrimination, Islamophobia and xenophobia now sees antisemitism as part of its own, and it invites anti-Semitism to dance with it. As a result, anti-Semitism has been resurgently revived.
Many people may never have felt as strong as anti-Semitic, but they harbor xenophobia towards people of color. Their feelings about this are different from the beliefs and attitudes that my sisters and I have been instilled since childhood. Suddenly, anti-Semitism was added to the "exclusion" package. It seems to have become a weapon and has been incited since 2015 and 2016.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
I was touched by what you just said about using the camera as a way to find a sense of belonging.
For Sammy Faberman, the camera both provided him with a way to integrate into his social circle and separated him from the crowd because he had to be in the position of an observer. I don't want to spoil the reader, but in the film, Samicha breaks the truth about the marriage of the Fabelmans through the camera.
I'm curious if this is something that really happened, or is it a metaphor for how the film works?
Spielberg:
No. This is what really happened. I think this is one of the most painful things, and I have to sit down and think about it before finally deciding to show it, because this is the most secret I have kept with my mother since I was 16 years old. At 16, I was still too young to understand that my parents were just ordinary people, and I had to struggle to keep myself from hating them.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
I was impressed by the way Sami discovered the truth. Because I've always thought that as a director, you're used to conveying psychoemotional messages in non-verbal ways, such as body language, facial expressions, or other silent forces that run through the shot.
One of the great things about this movie is that you chose this way by accident, or by some instinct.
Spielberg:
I think maybe it's instinctive, because as my wife always says: there is no such thing as chance. She said, you know, you always want to use jokes as cover, but that doesn't actually exist.
NYTimes：
This statement is very "Freud".
Spielberg:
In fact, even when I was just a 12-year-old, I was always in control of my films. Until this moment, I lost control of the complex information that was enough to destroy a 16-year-old. It was something I'll never forget, and my mother and I talked about it for decades since.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
Does this make you want to regain control of everything you do? For example, control the story, control the image.
Spielberg:
That's right. Maybe I even wanted to make those images more cheerful and friendly. I didn't receive psychotherapy, but I did see my father's psychiatrist to try to get a diagnosis of mental disorder from him to avoid going to Vietnam to fight. That was the only time I went to see a psychoanalyst. By the way, the psychiatrist was personally very supportive of the Vietnam War, so he refused to give me a certificate. So I wasted two months going to him three times a week while I was still in college.
So it should be said that the films, the family, the friends and relatives, and the stories I chose to tell gave me the same amount of healing power as psychoanalytic therapy.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
The actors in this film play the people you know best, even you. Is there any difference in how it feels to work with these actors?
Spielberg:
Let me think about how to say it is easier to understand. When I cast Dream House like every movie (i.e. find the best actor for the role), I suddenly realized that doing so would not lead to results. And, more than the actor's own talent, I value a certain sense of "familiarity". I mean, I'm really looking for good actors, but I need someone who has already brought back my parents' smiles in other movies. Obviously, I need them to evoke my familiarity, which is more subjective. It's like when we look at ourselves and get up to find someone who is similar to us.
So casting became a lot more difficult, and I needed to understand the actors from different angles. What I want to feel is, oh! Something about her reminds me of my mother, and something about him reminds me of my father. So, the choice of actors we have become very limited.
I considered a lot of actors, but I ended up choosing good actors like Paul Dano and Michelle Williams. They are two of the best actors I've ever worked with.
Michelle Williams in "The House of Dreams"
NYTimes：
Did Paul and Michelle have any special performances that struck you?
Spielberg:
Previously, my favorite performance was Michelle Williams' performance on "Blue Valentine," but I now think her role as Gwen Verdon in "Fossey and Worden" is her most straightforward and powerful performance, unlike any of her previous performances. I thought to myself, oh my God, she can really be completely different from the previous performance and completely reinvent herself through the character, which is a huge inspiration to me.
Michelle Williams on Blue Valentine
NYTimes：
Micky is also a performer. She is both a musician and a dancer. This aspect of her character is very important in the movie.
Spielberg:
She is a performing artist, but she is also a mother who is a performing artist. She is more inclined to get along with us like her peers than her mother. For example, my three younger sisters refused to call her "Mama" from a very young age, preferring to call her "Li," which is her last name. I was the only child in the family who called her "Mommy". This is because she wants to be our friend and not the head teacher or caregiver at home. She wants us to see her as one of us.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
This is well reflected in the film. In addition, the uncertain relationship between Micky and Bert also runs through the film.
Their perception and Sammy's perception of this are fundamentally incompatible, and this is one of the themes of the film in a way.
Spielberg:
My father sang out of tune like me, but he loved classical music and appreciated her artistic qualities as a pianist and lover of classical music. Classical music is their common passion.
I remember being dragged to a Philadelphia Orchestra concert. As a child, I didn't understand classical music, I just found it scary. It disturbed me and it was too loud. My parents were obsessed, and I was sandwiched between them. Their hands would often go over my legs, shaking each other with tears in their eyes. But their similarities stop there. My father's thinking leaned more toward science, while my mother's was more inclined toward the performing arts.
"Dream House"
NYTimes：
"Dream House" is a film about cinema, but also about the history of cinema. The film begins with Cecil B. DeMille and ends with John Ford.
Because I'm a film critic, I would understand it as if you were tracking a piece of film history that you were in.
Spielberg:
As a film businessman, I think I do have some similarities with Dimir, but I've always loved John Ford's work. I studied his films later and became very familiar with them. Ford was my idol, and I got excellent guidance from him, even though he sounded like he was scolding me at the time. But I don't feel, "Oh my God, he scared me to death," I just feel that it benefits a lot.
I was only 16 when I met him, and I didn't know anything about his accomplishments, or that he had a bad temper and would eat two young studio executives raw for breakfast or something. I learned this later, when people gradually started writing books about him. Now that I think about it, I'm really the aftermath of my life.
David Lynch plays John Ford in "The House of Dreamers"
NYTimes：
When I watched this film, I thought a lot about the uncertain state of the current film and the experience of being conquered by the world on the big screen. This experience is a pivotal moment in the film, and it may not be available to future generations.
Spielberg:
Yes, but throughout the history of film, we will find that the emergence of television has caused Hollywood to lose a huge audience market, but Hollywood has responded positively to this. In the early fifties, they invented the Sinima Skop widescreen system, and later 3D cinema, which became all the rage.
Since 1961, NBC has had a television show called "Saturday Night at the Movies," which allows viewers to watch movies on Saturday nights without having to go out. You can stay at home and watch movies, because NBC's selection of movies can be said to be tailored for those who do not want to go outside. This practice is no longer new.
The pandemic has created opportunities for streaming platforms to witness a breakthrough increase in subscribers, while also hurting some of my filmmakers who have casually canceled theatrical releases of their films. After they were paid their salaries, those movies were suddenly handed over to streamers like HBO Max. In the example I want to talk about, the specific platform is indeed HBO Max. Then, everything started to change.
"Dream House"
Older audiences will breathe a sigh of relief because they no longer have to step on sticky popcorn in the cinema from time to time. But I believe that these same older audiences, once they walk into the cinema, the sense of wonder that comes with the communal atmosphere shared with strangers will also be comforting.
I believe that if the movie is great, they will leave the theater and say, "Isn't it nice for us to go out and watch this movie tonight?" "So, it's all up to the film to be good enough that when the lights come on, the audience will join others in rejoicing that they're in the cinema."
NYTimes：
I'm curious what movies people go to the cinema and what kind of movies they watch at home? And how did the film industry figure it out?
Spielberg:
Right now, the film industry is trying to figure this out. I learned exciting news: the domestic box office of "Elvis" exceeded 100 million. A lot of older viewers went to see the film, which made me realize that when COVID turned endemic, people started to return to theaters, and I regained hope. I feel like cinema is on its way back. I really think so.
There is no doubt that blockbusters from Marvel, DC, Pixar, and other animated films and horror movies still have their place today. Hopefully, however, comedy movies are back in theaters, because you can't laugh as loudly as you do when you watch comedy at home with other audiences.
"Dream House"
I don't often watch my own films with audiences, but my wife said to me, "You have to go to the Toronto Film Festival to see 'Dream House,' we can sit in the back row, but you have to go see it once". It was a great movie-watching experience. I was upset, but it was a screening for 2,000 people, so when it came to the funny scene, the whole cinema was like a big comedy.
I think film directors have to come together and hold streaming media accountable for most of their films so that they have the opportunity to be released in theaters, not just in four theaters, to qualify for awards. It will take action from all of us – WGA (Writers Guild), DGA (Directors Guild), and ultimately the Academy.
If you're just starting out and streaming platforms are willing to give you the opportunity to direct your first work, streaming is bound to dictate you. But I don't think anyone would be willing to insulate their movies from the big screen, and no one would want to say: No, I'd rather have my movies shown on iPads and in living rooms.
It is true that there are movies that are perfect for showing on the iPad or in the living room. So the decision executives and, like me, at Amblin Partner should be: Are we going to commission this movie to a streaming service? Are we going to commission another film to a four- or six-week theatrical window? I had to make similar decisions when I was working on my other job, running a small film company.
Steven Spielberg
NYTimes：
This is indeed a new shift, especially considering that before the pandemic, cinemas were occupied by film series, blockbuster blockbusters, and films that exhibitors identified as profitable. The channel for non-IP films to enter theaters seems to be narrower.
Spielberg:
Yes. Of course, we don't want theaters to go bankrupt, but we also want cinemas to keep their attitude open. In the same way, I had hoped to form a political expression through the Washington Post's reflection on the Nixon administration, and I thought that this reflection could lead more people to understand what is happening in our country.
The Washington Post
I'm not sure if I had received the script for The Washington Post in the post-pandemic era, I would have been more inclined to shoot it for Apple or Netflix and meet millions of viewers in that format. Because this film wants to express something to millions of people, and we'll never be able to get millions of people into enough theaters and have that impact. Everything has become so much that I will tell you this.
NYTimes：
There are many films that I consider masterpieces that have briefly owned their own moments and then disappeared into electronic algorithms.
Spielberg:
When we were kids, we would collect movies on home videotapes like we collected vinyl records, and my film collection far exceeded my record collection.
But now that people are storing everything in the cloud, we no longer need shelves for the movies we love. Those films became a kind of cultural heritage that inspired us to discover value and become better people, after all, movies can teach us something faster than our parents. I miss the tapes, the old antiques that I can hold in my hands and put in the player, maybe I'm an old-school guy.
I'm 75 years old. I know what it's like to have something I love, I know what it's like to own a vinyl of Lawrence of Arabia and a DVD of it a few years later. I cherish that.
"Dream House"
Editor: anchor
We are all mortal.
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