Teenage Dreams

As Steven Spielberg looks back on his youth and the birth of his love of moviemaking, The Fabelmans offers a wondrous reminder of just how much film can be a lifeline for young people – Rory Doherty celebrates the craft.

We’re 25 minutes into The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s introspective take on the defining moments of his adolescence (filmmaking and divorce), and Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) is making a Western picture. He reviews his developed film from the confines of a closet, hunched in the darkness with the projector between his legs. The footage is spread out across a blank wall showing his fellow Boy Scouts wearing cowboy hats and sneers; Sammy flicks a switch to make fragments of film reverse and repeat. Something’s wrong. He rubs his temple with the energy of a seasoned filmmaker unimpressed with studio notes. He articulates his dissatisfaction in one word: “Fake.”

Sammy’s gunfight looks just like kids playing pretend, which is the one thing it categorically cannot be. Sammy has sold his friends on the idea that they’re doing something greater than playing – they’re making a movie. Movies have dynamism, emotional power, and they’re cool; if it doesn’t look good enough, this film will betray and humiliate everyone involved by revealing them as the children they are. Sammy judges his movie fake not because it doesn’t look realistic – everyone involved clearly looks 12 years old – but because it doesn’t look impressive. They have not yet legitimised their childlike impulses to play.

There’s few activities committed to celluloid more fun and endearing than kids making movies. Their faux-professionalism mixed with effervescent, youthful glee makes even the lowest of lo-fi productions charming to watch. What The Fabelmans understands, along with JJ Abrams’ Super 8 and Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow, are the social dynamics of teenaged movie-making: when you make a film with your friends, you have to navigate relationships that get more charged and complicated the older you get and the longer you shoot.

Juvenile filmmaking occupies a curious place in hell: the teenage social sphere. While Sammy’s films prove a great success within his Scout Troop, in a broader high school context he’s the victim of anti-semitic bullying, which only reaffirms his reluctance to showcase his filmmaking prowess. In Super 8, 14-year-old practical effects guru Joe (Joel Courtney) is part of a tightly knit group of outsiders defined by their zeal for zombie and B-movie horror – and their lowly social status is only reaffirmed by their fawning over the older, much cooler Alice (Elle Fanning) entering their fraternity. Son of Rambow makes the unlikely pairing of a problem pupil Lee (Will Poulter) and a religious oddball Will (Bill Millner), further emphasising that filming stunts in the woods is an activity solely reserved for kids with no friends to perform them to.

And yet, the excitement of movie-making proves infectious. The impossibly cool Alice marvels at Joe’s craft; Will’s imagination attracts the New Wave sensibilities of the super cool French exchange student Didier (Jules Sitruk). Sammy’s entire year group go mad for his film of their “Ditch Day” beach social, even if he’s too strung out by his parents’ divorce to appreciate it. Making a film requires genuine talent and passion, and despite their impulse to regard these traits with dismissive mockery (there’s nothing more difficult than trying to make a teenager take something seriously), swathes of youths are impressed by their peer’s confidence and virtuosity – because it makes them look like grown-ups.

As movie-making attracts a growing cohort of curious teens, this emulation of adult professionalism becomes overt. All three films playfully lean into the charms of youngsters acting with the strict organisation and rigorous work ethic that define proper film sets. Under his confident direction, the shoot of Sammy’s war picture moves like a well-oiled machine, with dozens of pretend-soldiers in awe of the slick effects work. Super 8 goes a step further to remind us of the crew’s immaturity – even on set, they can’t resist cursing and insulting each other. Lee resents losing control over his Son of Rambow film as more and more people get involved; something about the joy of shooting crossbolts at your friend in the woods is lost with a 1st AD marching around keeping everyone in line.

A lack of finesse doesn’t affect these filmmakers’ confidence: as a director, Super 8’s Charles (Riley Griffiths) largely talks his actors through every line and emotional beat. Watching Lee’s sloppily composed frame capture all the outrageous stunts he can push his repressed friend into doing suggest he’d be better suited in a stunts department. Only Sammy shows the ability to transcend his limited experience, inadvertently giving the jock playing his army captain an existential crisis as he surveys the remnants of his battalion – resulting in him walking The Searchers-style into the distance long after cut has been called. 

Two things are universal across these three productions, the first being shameless plagiarism. Original ideas are hard enough to come by as a professional filmmaker – it’s entirely excusable for teenagers to rip off their favourite genres, whether it's ‘50s John Ford, ‘70s George Romero, or the excesses of ‘80s action. Feeling like you have an active, centralised part in your favourite stories helps a kid understand the ways culture defines them, even though they might not be able to explain them with words.

The other common thread is how inventive a director will get to make their film seem less amateurish. Charles lucks out with a passing train, the spectacle of a crash, and a growing military presence in his town to bolster his ropey zombie flick with lucrative “production value”. Sammy doubles the size of his war film’s casualties by making dead bodies pick themselves up, run behind the camera, and lie down across a different patch of desert. An OAP’s sincere plea to be rescued from an old folks home makes for a great POW monologue in Son of Rambow. In all cases, it’s not that these productions seamlessly concealed their lack of resources, but the obvious signs of working around limitations would impress any low-budget director.

The biggest challenges these kids face aren’t the ones that make their movies look cheap, it’s the ones that threaten their friendships. Envy festers between the teens who succeed at social inclusion, like how Will is accepted by the cult of Didier while Lee continues to be ostracised, or how Charles seems equally upset that Joe won’t let him blow up his model train and that Alice fancies him. The strangest dynamic comes in Sammy’s Ditch Day film, where his fixation on gaining his bully’s approval results in a film that almost deifies the jock’s good-looks and physical prowess. To the bully, it’s embarrassing to be shown in such a light, and he and Sammy can both sense its artificiality – it’s just as fake as his friends making “pew pew” noises dressed as cowboys. It’s a striking reminder that cuts through the filmmakers’ projected professionalism. These are kids, and sometimes they make films for the same reason kids do most things – they want people to like them.

Would the kids in The Fabelmans, Super 8 or Son of Rambow reach the catharsis they inevitably do without making movies? If they hadn’t woven their insecurities into their production processes, they wouldn’t have been amplified to the point where they couldn't be ignored any longer. When directors look back on their filmmaking youth, a curious crossover happens: in reminding themselves of the enthusiastic inventiveness and fears of vulnerability that defined their younger selves, they bring to life characters who are only concerned with being seen as a grown-up. It’s clear childhood filmmaking isn’t just a commonality for big-name directors, it can be healing for kids with no other way to express the confusion that fills their heads.

The Fabelmans is out in UK cinemas on January 27.