‘The Fabelmans’ Is ‘Remarkably Mediocre’ and ‘Discouraging’ to Young Filmmakers
Joyce Carol Oates Is calling out Steven Spielberg In an influencer feud that we didn’t have on our 2023 Bingo card.
Amid the awards season circuit where the adaptation of Oates’ fictionalized portrait of Marilyn Monroe, “Blonde,” and Spielberg’s autobiographical epic “The Fabelmans” are both making the rounds, Oates shared her film review for Spielberg’s personal feature.
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“This was the most imaginative scene in ‘The Fabelmans,’ which was on the whole a remarkably mediocre movie for all its attention & the recent award,” Oates tweeted with a photo of David Lynch as director John Ford following “The Fabelmans” Golden Globes win. “Must be discouraging for young filmmakers.”
Netflix and Plan B film “Blonde” has been mostly iced out of the awards season buzz, other than in the SAG and Golden Globes categories of Best Actress for Ana de Armas’ performance as the legendary star. Oates claimed that the NC-17-rated film was a “feminist” work Andrew Dominik, director of the feature, denied that it was being viewed as anti-choice.
Oates continued on Twitter, “I didn’t see the award ceremony but — did ‘Fabelmans’ really win over ‘Tar’ — ? ‘Banshees’? Amazing.”
She also retweeted a post reading, “I thought [‘The Fabelmans’] It was terrible. The writing was heavy-handed, and the whole thing seemed artificial. Bleh.”
Oates clarified her dig at Spielberg’s film, writing, “By making a blonde-Aryan-antisemite the pseudo hero of his high school movie the young Fabelman disarms enemies & wins a pseudo friend. Is this an acknowledgment of the superficial triteness of the director’s career as an entertainer?”
Spielberg has not commented on Oates’ criticism.
“The Fabelmans” stars Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Spielberg’s parents, with Gabriel LaBelle playing a young budding director named Sam. Seth Rogen plays a close family friend.
Williams, Actress, was nominated along with Spielberg and Tony Kushner (Best Screenplay) and John Williams (Best Score).
“I’ve been hiding from this story since I was 17 years old,” Spielberg said during his acceptance speech It was a great feeling to finally make the film. “I never had the courage to hit the story head-on until Tony Kushner…The fact that everybody sees me as a success story and everybody sees all of us the way they perceive us based on how they get the information. But nobody really knows who we are until we’re courageous enough to tell everyone who we are. It was a difficult task to determine when I could tell my story. I eventually figured it out at the age of 74. I said, ‘You better do it now.’”
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