In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for The Fabelmans, we will explain the film’s ending.
Cast
- Gabriel LaBelle – Sammy Fabelman
- Michelle Williams – Mitzi Schildkraut-Fabelman
- Paul Dano – Burt Fabelman
- Seth Rogen – Bennie Loewy
- Julia Butters – Regina “Reggie” Fabelman
- Judd Hirsch – Boris Podgorny
- Jeannie Berlin – Hadassah Fabelman
- Robin Bartlett – Tina Schildkraut
- Keeley Karsten – Natalie Fabelman
- Sophia Kopera – Lisa Fabelman
- Sam Rechner – Logan Hall
- Oakes Fegley – Chad Thomas
- Chloe East – Monica Sherwood
- Isabelle Kusman – Claudia Denning
- Tony Kushner – Writer
- Steven Spielberg – Writer and director
The end of The Fabelmans explained
Recap
After accepting a job at CBS to work on the television TV show Hogan’s Heroes, Sammy is confronted by the show’s co-creator Bernard Fein. Bernard is worried about Sammy, who seems to be out of place in the television setting. “Aren’t you passionate about movies?” he asks, to which Sammy replies that he’s willing to work from the ground up to make it in Hollywood. Noticing Sammy’s work ethic and enthusiasm, he invites Sammy to meet the “greatest director who ever lived.” Little does Sammy know this man is John Ford.
In Ford’s office, Ford points to a picture and asks Sammy to tell him what he sees. Sammy begins to describe the people and objects in the picture before Ford stops him and demands, “Where is the horizon?” It’s at the bottom of the frame, Sammy says. Ford then points to another picture and repeats the process. As Sammy describes the picture once again, Ford stops him and again demands, “Where is the horizon?” It’s at the top of the picture.
That’s when Ford gives Sammy the only piece of advice he’ll give that day. When you frame a shot, the horizon belongs at the top of the frame or the bottom of the frame—but never in the middle of the frame.
Sammy takes his leave and steps outside. He looks around at the Hollywood lot and begins to walk away. As he walks, the horizon is positioned in the center of the frame. Then, suddenly, the camera points upwards, moving the horizon to the bottom of the frame.
Meaning
To some, this visual adjustment at the end of The Fabelmans might seem like a joke. Like it came out of nowhere and has no place in this movie. But The Fabelmans is very much a metafilm that, for its entirety, has very much carried the same self-awareness. It all depends on how you’ve watched the movie.
So what is a metafilm? Essentially, a metafilm is a movie within a movie. Or a movie that makes the audience aware it is watching a movie. And our main path to understanding The Fabelmans as a metafilm is none other than the director himself: Steven Spielberg. It’s well known that the movie depicts Spielberg’s childhood. That’s been part of the film’s marketing during awards season, as the filmmakers and producers are hoping to capitalize on the story of Hollywood’s greatest director of the past several decades. For the script, Spielberg would detail key moments of his life, and Kushner, co-writer of the film alongside Spielberg, would inquire about specific parts. This is how the screenplay was born.
But that’s only half the story. It’s one thing to write down the story of your life. It’s another trip entirely to visually capture the pivotal moments that would define you as the man, as the artist you’d become. This is where The Fabelmans goes from autobiography to metafilm—this is what lends key insight into that final shot.
Even if you didn’t know The Fabelmans was based on Spielberg’s life, there are plenty of clues throughout that the director is very much part of this movie. After Sammy watches The Greatest Show on Earth in theaters, he becomes obsessed with recreating the movie’s momentous crash with a toy train set. When the toy trains crash, we aren’t watching the screen from afar like Sammy did in the theater—we are at Sammy’s level, in line with the trains as they barrel down the tracks. We are seeing what he sees. We are gaining insight into a soon-to-be-filmmaker’s cinematic vision.
The visual examples continues as Sammy works his camera. We are constantly looking through the camera at what Sammy sees. When he coaches an actor how to perform a scene, we then see that scene play out in its entirety. We are cued into how Sammy edits together certain scenes. We watch him discover Mitzi and Bennie’s secret affair through the camp footage. Over and over, we are given crucial insight into how his filmic eye functions. In essence, we are watching from Spielberg’s childhood from his own point of view.
The most penetrating moment happens as Mitzi reveals she’s been having an affair with Bennie. Her daughters are crying and screaming at her while Sammy, who already knew about the affair, watches from the stairwell. Then, suddenly, Sammy envisions himself in the mirror of the room, rolling a camera and capturing the footage of the moment. He gazes at this scene in shock, completely arrested by the fact that all he can do is think about how he’d film such an arresting, pivotal moment in his life.
But here’s the thing: that moment in the mirror didn’t actually happen. Maybe, yes, Spielberg did think about how he’d film that moment as a teenager while his family was fighting. But there’s a difference between a literal representation of something and a symbolic representation. And what we see in that moment is a cinematic representation of Spielberg’s essence at that time. We don’t see Sammy in that mirror—we see the director in that mirror. We see how Spielberg felt at the time, how filmmaking was part of his very being, how storytelling would become his way of dealing with life’s greatest pleasures and grievances.
This is how you can think of the entire film. Yes, the characters of this movie represent real people from Spielberg’s life. And yes, the events of this movie reflect real situations in which Spielberg was involved. But we also have to remember that we’re watching a movie. This isn’t a documentary, but a man’s recollection of his own life. Every movie does this, but not every movie is about a filmmaker who’s actively making films in the movie. Thus, each and every moment of The Fabelmans comes packed with a filmic twist, with an artistic vision. We aren’t watching Spielberg himself, but Spielberg reflecting on his existence and how he came to be.
With this attitude, the ending of the movie makes complete sense. If we accept that we are watching Spielberg in real time as he reflects on his childhood, then each and every moment of the film exists in the same vein as that final moment when the camera tilts upwards. Sammy is so concerned with the objects in the pictures that he forgets to think about the horizon, the environment, the framing—the destination. Sammy is so fixated on the mundane elements of Ford’s pictures that he overlooks a key philosophical component of filmmaking: it doesn’t matter what people are doing in the frame—what matters is how you frame what those people are doing.
And with that lesson in his back pocket, Spielberg decides to tilt the camera upwards. It’s an optimistic ending that repositions the horizon at the bottom of the frame, opening up the world to Sammy as he sets out to become a director. Through the ups and downs of Spielberg’s life, film has been a guiding light that taught him how to visualize stories. Stories that speak to the universal truths of life and help others through troubling times. Stories that reveal the depths of humanity and provide a promising path to redemption, to enlightenment, to purification. By being so vulnerable and making himself such a part of the movie, Spielberg doesn’t just make a movie for himself, but for anybody searching for catharsis and inspiration.
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