Every Main Character In The Fabelmans Ranked Worst To Best
This post contains spoilers for "The Fabelmans."
Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical film "The Fabelmans" recasts his childhood and memories through the lens of the titular family. His avatar is Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), a kid coming of age while simultaneously learning that he has a deep love of — and aptitude for — filmmaking. Sadly, his growing obsession with cinema coincides with the breakdown of his family. As Sammy becomes more aware of the world around him, we watch his father and mother inevitably split. The film deftly handles its delicate balancing act. Overall, "The Fabelmans" is an impressive feat of self-mythologizing that pushes for earnest sentimentality while letting its characters be messy and complicated.
Thanks to both the screenplay (by Spielberg and "West Side Story" collaborator Tony Kushner) and a talented cast, "The Fabelmans" is full of memorable characters who populate Sammy's world. Read on for every main character in "The Fabelmans," ranked!
10. Reggie Fabelman (Julia Butters)
Growing up is scary. Sammy Fabelman resists change, frustrated by his family's constant moving and his mother's emotional affair with a family friend. He's a moody teenager, constantly lashing out at others. "The Fabelmans" is his story, but it's also a portrait of the whole family, including his younger sister Reggie (Julia Butters). There are two even younger Fabelman girls, but Reggie gets the most to do. She's closest to Sammy in age and the most perceptive sister. When she sees the men in her family watching her mother (Michelle Williams) dance in the car headlights during a camping trip, she's worried about her mom's welfare, feeling protective even though she's the child in the situation.
In one of the film's most touching scenes, Reggie seeks comfort from Sammy after they discover their parents are getting a divorce. While Sammy is ready to condemn his mother as selfish, Reggie has a different reading. "You are way more selfish than her," Reggie cries, driving home the film's idea that Sammy will have to choose between art and family. "That's why you're angry at her." As she was in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," Butters is wise beyond her years, making Reggie a memorable character. But it's a shame she doesn't get more moments to shine.
9. Chad Thomas (Oakes Fegley)
When the Fabelmans move from Arizona to California, Sammy discovers he's going to have to contend with something he hasn't experienced before: antisemitic bullying. Soon he's getting called slurs in the locker room, roughed up on the volleyball court, and punched in the hallways. The worst hatred comes from a kid named Chad (Oakes Fegley). The popular kid begins calling Sammy "Bagelman," and the budding filmmaker finds bagels hung in his locker with insults written on them. (Guess who's responsible?)
Chad isn't the school's top dog: that would be Logan (Sam Rechner). Instead, he's more of a sidekick, trying to win his friend's approval by beating up the new kid. His mocking of Sammy's Jewish identity is based on prejudice, ignorance, and hatred, absolutely. But it's also just...pathetic.
This is something Sammy realizes. When he makes a film about the school's Senior Skip Day, he includes footage of Chad drunkenly stumbling around the beach, striking out with girls, and getting his feet wet in the surf. Chad is furious, and it's incredibly satisfying to witness his social status be undercut by the power of Sammy's filmmaking. But what's most cathartic is when Sammy, Logan, and Chad have a showdown in the hallway moments later, and Logan turns on his friend. Chad gets everything he deserves and then some.
8. Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano)
The lightly-fictionalized version of Stephen Spielberg's father is named Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano). Otherwise, many biographical details remain the same. Like the real-life Arnold Spielberg, Burt is a computer engineer, a pioneer who develops technology that would ultimately lead to the widespread availability of the personal computer. He's a genius, to be sure, but he seems like the odd one out in the family. No one quite understands what he's talking about when he discusses his work, so Sammy naturally gravitates to his artist mother instead.
But it's not just that no one understands him. Burt doesn't make much of an effort to understand his family either. He's particularly unimpressed with his son's budding talent for filmmaking: To Sammy's eternal consternation, he refers to it as a "hobby" rather than a passion. In the battle between art and family, Burt pushes Sammy to choose his family. That may be a perfectly natural response for a father. "The Fabelmans" doesn't condemn him for it, but as a viewer, we know Spielberg is an auteur, so it's easy to root against Burt.
Dano is exceptional in the part, even if the character feels less central than other figures. He particularly shines in the film's final act, after the divorce. "We're never not going to know each other, Sammy," he tells his son. Even though he doesn't get his son's love of film, Dano's face radiates pride anyway.
7. Bennie (Seth Rogen)
Computer programmer Bennie (Seth Rogen) is a friend of the Fabelman family: He's so close to everyone that they refer to him as an uncle. He's a warm presence in their lives, so when Burt gets a new job that will move the family to Arizona, he convinces his company to hire Bennie as well. He's there on their family camping trip, and happy to watch Sammy exhibits one of his movies to an audience of Boy Scouts and their families. Rogen has rarely been better.
Unfortunately for the Fabelmans, Bennie is actually too close — he's deeply in love with Sammy's mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams). Sammy uncovers this while editing together footage from the camping trip. His camera inadvertently captured a hidden truth, noticing a meaningful glance here and a touch held too long there. Bennie becomes a source of deep resentment for the teenager who doesn't yet know how to control his emotions.
Thankfully, he gets a chance to redeem himself before the family moves to California, and it's in this scene that Bennie really shines. When Sammy decides to leave filmmaking behind and sells his camera, he discovers Bennie at the same camera shop, purchasing an upgraded model for him as a gift. Bennie states, "You think whatever bad things you want about me, kiddo, but you stop makin' movies, it'll break your mother's heart." He may be a homewrecker, but he's coming from a place of real love.
6. Logan Hall (Sam Rechner)
Logan Hall is a more interesting character than his sidekick counterpart Chad. While the latter kid has bouts of violent antisemitism because he thinks it makes him look cool, Logan is interested in maintaining his place at the top of the high school pecking order. He's popular and athletic. He not only has a beautiful girlfriend but is cheating on her with an equally-beautiful girl on the side. Basically, he's everything the far-nerdier Sammy is not. (It's probably not an accident that Logan is blond-haired and blue-eyed to boot.)
At first, Logan seems like a bully we've seen in other coming-of-age films. When Sammy films him on Senior Skip Day, however, he avoids the easy temptation to embarrass the other boy the way he did Chad. Instead, he films Logan like a superhero, capturing his straining muscles during a volleyball game and displaying his winning footrace in triumphant slow motion. His classmates are whipped into a frenzy of popular-guy worship. Surprisingly, Logan is disturbed by what he sees. In the hallway outside the school dance, he confronts Sammy, driven to tears because he feels like a phony after seeing himself through Sammy's camera.
They share a cigarette and come to an understanding of one another, and it's an interesting way to resolve the film's bullying storyline. Finally, walking off into the softly-lit pastel hallway, Logan proclaims with a smirk, "Life's nothing like the movies, Fabelman."
5. Monica Sherwood (Chloe East)
"The Fabelmans" is a coming-of-age drama, but it's also funny. No character gets bigger laughs than Monica (Chloe East). When the Fabelmans move to California and Sammy starts at a new school, he meets Monica after being bullied by a group of antisemitic jocks. The pretty, popular girl is fascinated by the fact that he's Jewish because she very much is not. Photos of pinups like Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Tony Curtis are all mixed up with glamor shots of Jesus Christ on her bedroom walls. She even has a giant crucifix over her bed, outlined in a heart-shaped string of Christmas lights. "Jesus is sexy!" She tells her bewildered new friend. "He came to us as a man... a handsome young man!"
They strike up a fast and furious relationship that gets mined for every possible comedic moment, like Sammy agreeing to pray with her in exchange for a makeout session. Still, there's an undercurrent of tokenization to her fascination with Sammy, which makes her an uncomfortable character too. She tries to convince Sammy to convert to Christianity rather than accepting him for who he is; he refuses. Though their breakup is uncomfortable and Sammy is devastated, it's easy to see she wasn't a good fit for him. Thankfully, he hadn't been drawn too far into her orbit.
4. John Ford (David Lynch)
In "The Fabelmans," Steven Spielberg pays tribute to directors who have influenced him. In the film's opening, Sammy and his parents go see Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show On Earth." This leads to a young Sammy filming a train derailment scene with the help of some model trains. Later, he and his friends go see John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Shortly thereafter, Sammy shoots a Western. It's clear that Sammy Fabelman finds his cinematic voice by looking to the masters, just like Spielberg
In the film's final scenes, Sammy finally comes face to face with one of his idols. A letter of introduction to CBS lands him a meeting with the showrunner of "Hogan's Heroes" (Greg Grunberg), who has a moment of inspiration and sets Sammy up with a meeting next door. He introduces him to "the greatest director of all time" — none other than John Ford (David Lynch).
The "Twin Peaks" director reportedly had to be convinced by Laura Dern to join the cast, but it's a good thing he did. His appearance as Ford is a short but memorable sequence where he advises the budding young filmmaker about the horizon line in movies. As Sammy happily skips away from the meeting, the camera quickly reframes so that the horizon line is at the bottom of the screen — proving (as if we needed it) that Steven Spielberg learned his lesson too.
3. Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch)
A terrible premonition prefigures Uncle Boris' (Judd Hirsch) appearance in "The Fabelmans." Shortly after her mother dies, Mitzi has a nightmare where her mother warns her not to let "him" into her home. She wakes, terrified, wondering what her mother could have meant. When Uncle Boris shows up on the Fabelmans' doorstep later that day, Mitzi decides that her mother's warning has come true. Still, they let him in: After all, he's mourning the loss of his sister.
Though he's only in one stretch of the movie, Uncle Boris makes quite an impression — thanks, in part, to Hirsch's committed performance. Sammy is interested in his uncle because he worked in Hollywood. When he's put in Sammy's room to sleep, he lectures Sammy about the conflict between art and family. Immediately intuiting the young man's conflict between his passion for movies and his father's assignment to edit together a film of their camping trip, Uncle Boris delivers what may as well be the thesis of "The Fabelmans." "Believe me, Sammy boy, I get it," he says. "Family, art... ah! It'll tear you in two." Boris' words hang over the rest of the film.
2. Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams)
Mitzi looms large over The Fabelmans family. Sammy's mother is an eccentric woman, a piano player who — we're told — could have been world-famous. Instead, she's devoted herself to her family. But her actions at times border on recklessness (or mania). See, for example, an early sequence where the family spies a tornado. Against Burt's protestations, she piles the kids into the car and drives straight for the source of the mayhem. "Is this safe?" One of the kids cries. "Of course it is," she snaps. "I'm your mother."
To Williams' credit, she makes Mitzi feel human rather than a collection of aphorisms. Before we have really had a chance to meet the character, we find her telling her young son, "Movies are dreams that you never forget." It feels too cloying — like Steven Spielberg is looking back at his mother with rose-colored glasses. But that turns out to be exactly the goal of the film. "The Fabelmans" is about Spielberg excavating his memories of his mother as a towering family myth and human being. In her final scene, she delivers another life lesson to her son. This one turns out to be a real tearjerker, as it proves she sees him as a person. "You do what your heart says you have to, 'cause you don't owe anyone your life," she says. "Not even me."
1. Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle)
Williams is campaigning for an Oscar in the Best Actress category, and her performance as Mitzi is one of the most memorable things about "The Fabelmans." Really, though, the movie belongs to Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy Fabelman — the film's central character. Sure, it's an ensemble piece — a movie about how Sammy reacts to his family and what he learns about them as he grows. But without a performance as strong as Labelle's, the film wouldn't work. After all, Sammy is a young Steven Spielberg, which must have been a daunting task for a young actor who has only had minor roles before; he does even better than one could have hoped.
In LaBelle's hands, Sammy is sympathetic. His performance fully embraces Sammy's youth and inexperience while simultaneously conveying that the film knows he's being unfair and unkind. Sammy is funny and creative, but also sullen and standoffish. He loves his family deeply. However, he behaves cruelly toward his mother when he thinks he's uncovered her affair.
Sammy spends a lot of time in the film reacting to other people. To look and listen with intention is an underrated acting skill, and LaBelle does it well. We can always tell what Sammy is thinking or at least feeling. When Sammy jumps for joy in the film's final moments, we jump with him.