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Review of The Fabelmans (John Williams)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you appreciate John Williams' mastery of subtle melody and restraint, his approach to this score extremely understated and short in duration.

Avoid it... if you expect warmth from all corners of this work, Williams' two themes sometimes struggling to engage emotionally in such a sparse environment.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Fabelmans: (John Williams) Famed director and producer Steven Spielberg had long been planning a somewhat autobiographical film about his youth, one of his sisters helping craft the story but Spielberg never comfortable moving forward while his parents were still alive despite their late support in doing so. His youth was marked by turbulent family relations, moves across country, and eventually anti-Semitism, and despite those potential obstacles, Spielberg managed to nurture his love of filmmaking. Through the fictional family in The Fabelmans, he shows this passion budding from a young age all the way through his move to Los Angeles to enter the industry as an adult, support from his extended family important throughout the story. While the anti-Semitism is tangible in the plot, it's the dysfunction in Spielberg's family that really drives the adversity, his mother maintaining an affair with a friend of the father and eventually causing a divorce. Foremost to the success of The Fabelmans, however, is Spielberg's typical mastery of engrossing visual techniques and direction of children in leading roles, and the film was highly acclaimed despite failing to engage audiences initially. The project represents what Spielberg and composer John Williams have stated is their final collaboration, their 31st over fifty years. Inevitable talk of retirement is understandable for the maestro in his 90's, and The Fabelmans was an emotionally satisfying culmination and goodbye for the duo. Williams knew Spielberg's parents well, and the story therefore held deep personal meaning for him, too, so the composer saw the music as an opportunity to pay tribute to them as well as function for the film. The role of Williams' score in the picture is actually quite minimal in length, as Spielberg utilized a variety of classical music pieces, most notably by Johann Sebastian Bach and Joseph Haydn, on solo piano to accompany the performances that his mother, here represented by Mitzi Fabelman, provide to the story and film. Additionally, as the boy is shown emulating his favorite childhood movies, original recordings of famous film scores of the Golden Age by Max Steiner, Victor Young, Alfred Newman, Elmer Bernstein, Cyril Mockridge, and more are tracked into the mix. None of these vintage insertions is included on the album release for this soundtrack.

In between the numerous and obviously placed classical music and pre-existing film music in The Fabelmans, Williams' score amounts to only roughly 22 minutes of running time. Whereas all the outside music represents more extroverted concepts sonically, the score is left to handle the deeply introspective familial relationships for most of its length. Listeners hoping that the Spielberg and Williams collaboration would end with a bang need to be prepared for how minimally rendered this 2022 score will sound by comparison, slotting behind even the composer's very light dramatic mode of the late 1980's and 1990's in its volume. The soundscape is dominated by the safely familiar, suburban tones of the piano on either end, but it is more frequently carried by celeste and harp, joined at times by acoustic guitar, string section, and select woodwind solos, notably oboe. The mix of the piano performances of the classical pieces is drier than in their score counterparts. The guitar really shines in its placement. There is truly only one fully orchestral cue at the end of the score, spanning both the singular, jaunty opening 45 seconds to "The Journey Begins" and the end credits performance of the score's themes that follows. This suite also provides the only orchestral performances of the classical material in something of a victorious evolution of the main character's aspirations; the remainder of the work supplies these insertions from solo piano only while the boy and family struggle to reach their proper destinies. The rest of the soundtrack is very softly understated, typically pleasant outside of the challenging dissonance of the "Midnight Call" cue foreshadowing mental illness in one frightening scene. Spielberg allows Williams intimate conversational or solitary moments of contemplation or subdued discovery, and most of these are tonally accessible even if they are extremely sparse in construct. The composer does provide two original themes for the score, and both are conveyed in ways that are basically compatible with the solo piano performances of the classical selections, though Williams never attempts to emulate their stately sense of elegance. Intriguingly, neither theme is particularly memorable. While Williams has certainly proven himself more than capable at generating notable melodies through the years, the two provided to The Fabelmans are not meant to be obvious head-turners, and one of them is actually quite elusive in how it is developed. Don't expect them to develop far beyond their original incarnations, either.

The main family theme for The Fabelmans by Williams will garner the most attention in the score, as it obviously opens and closes the work on piano. Tender and aspiring, intimate and unassuming, restrained and subdued, this theme moves with a slight waltz rhythm to suggest a dance in progress and resolves to key in all important moments, giving it a sense of finality. Heard immediately on solo piano in "The Fabelmans," the idea repeats at 1:05, and an ascending stairstep interlude sequence at 0:41 is equally attractive. A friendly acoustic guitar performance at the outset of "Mother and Son" returns to this tonally satisfying interlude at 0:41 for harp and cello, lightly shifting the primary phrasing to fuller strings before resolving back to piano over the guitar. The interlude is intriguingly accessed at the end of the cue as a closing tool. The main theme emerges out of the other one for a moment at 3:09 into "The Journey Begins," reassuming its opening suite piano performance at 3:47 but joined by string ensemble, the most exuberant rendition coming at 4:59 on strings over ebullient piano lines. That second theme is the one for both sadness and Mitzi, and Williams accesses this idea far more frequently in the score. Descending and meandering, this theme accompanies moments of perseverance and is a somewhat lost identity that struggles early but finally ascends in later phrases. Introduced at the start of "Mitzi's Dance" on harp and celeste, the theme clarifies itself at 0:33 on strings. It's barely recognizable in the dissonance of "Midnight Call" but rolls through "Reverie" on piano with the same waltz movements as the main theme. The theme emulates a music box on celeste at the start of "Reflections," toying with solo string accompaniment before reverting back at the end, and revisits the music box tone in "The Letter," eventually shifting to solo oboe over string pulses. Cyclically tentative on piano to open and close "New House," it moves to woodwinds and subtle brass shades in the middle of that cue. The sadness theme slows the tempo of the credits on celeste at 1:58 into "The Journey Begins," subtly emerging from the Haydn piece, returns in consolidated form at 3:27, and closes out the suite at 5:34 with class and final resolution. Overall, The Fabelmans is an extremely sensitive mood piece that may not warm your heart and may not be what many Williams collectors were hoping for after a two-year break for the composer. But it is a deeply personal, minimalistic expression of care. The very short album is disjointed due to the disparate personality of the classical performances, and the final cue does stand strikingly apart as well. Moments like "Mother and Son" lose the stark demeanor and offer occasional warmth, however, and these are reminders of Williams' mastery of melody and restraint.

• Music as Written for the Film: ****
• Music as Heard on Album: ***
• Overall: ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 31:14

• 1. The Fabelmans (2:13) • 2. Mitzi's Dance (2:05) • 3. Sonatina in A Minor, Op. 88 No. 3: III. Allegro Burlesco - composed by Friedrich Kuhlau (1:51) • 4. Midnight Call (2:23) • 5. Reverie (1:44) • 6. Mother and Son (2:28) • 7. Sonatina in C Major, Op. 36 No. 3: Spiritoso - composed by Muzio Clementi (1:58) • 8. Reflections (2:02) • 9. Concerto in D Minor, BWV 974: II. Adagio - composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (3:46) • 10. New House (2:28) • 11. The Letter (2:08) • 12. The Journey Begins* (6:08)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for the digital version of the album.

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