There can’t be anyone anywhere who hasn’t somehow been touched by a Steven Spielberg film. Some of us, for example, haven’t  dipped their toe into the sea for going on 40 years now. (Thanks for that, Jaws.) He has thus surely earned the right to finally turn the camera on himself, as he does with The Fabelmans, a memoir based on his childhood and discovery of filmmaking. This could have been sentimental and soggy, a ‘magic of the movies’ endeavour. There is some of that, but this is more than that. It’s about family, and the complexity of family, and it’s intensely personal, moving, absorbing and full of love. He is a master storyteller, and I say that even though I’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, unfortunately.

The film is directed by Spielberg who co-wrote the script with Tony Kushner. As far as I can ascertain, it is accurate about Spielberg’s early life even if names have been changed. Here we have Sammy (Mateo Zoryan), whom we first meet in 1952 when he’s six and about to go to the cinema for the first time but is too scared to step inside. (‘It’s dark!’) His parents, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano), cajole him in ways that instantly tell us about their different personalities. His mother, who had been a concert pianist but gave up her career when she married, is the artistic one. While she says it’ll be like a ‘dream’, his father, an electrical engineer, explains ‘persistence of vision’ and how it’s just one photograph after another and nothing to be afraid of. Sammy is eventually persuaded. The film is Cecile B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth and he is entranced, consumed, especially by the train-crash scene. He later re-enacts it over and over with his electric trains at home. His father is dismayed. He should treat his trains with ‘respect’. They were ‘expensive’. His mother understands. Sammy wants to ‘control’ his world. She suggests Sammy film the crash with Burt’s cine camera as that way he can watch it repeatedly without incurring any damage. And so the fire is lit.

This isn’t a plot-driven film as such. It’s episodic, a series of memories, with every scene adding to its cumulative power. The family moves with Burt’s job from Philadelphia to Arizona and then California. The family grows. Sammy is joined by three younger sisters and also there is an ‘Uncle Bennie’ (Seth Rogan), who isn’t an uncle, but Burt’s best friend. That’s what he’s sold as anyhow. Sammy (played engagingly by Gabriel LaBelle, once he is older) makes films for his scout pack and school friends and along the way he films a Fabelman camping trip, which uncovers a secret which, if acknowledged, will shatter the family. This brilliantly captures that moment when you realise your parents are just people and are as imperfect as all people are. Yet Spielberg always treats them tenderly. His father is predictable and his mother is not – she will drive into a tornado; she will suddenly purchase a pet monkey – but both are portrayed with equal affection. No one is one-dimensional. Even the high-school anti-Semitic bully is shown to have another side. There are laughs to be had with Monica (Chloe East), Sammy’s first girlfriend, who is a fervent Christian – ‘Jesus is sexy!’ – but even she is a proper character.

The performances are all excellent, as is the period detail. The film ends with Sammy meeting John Ford, as the real Spielberg did when he was 15. I won’t tell you who plays John Ford as that’ll ruin your fun. I will only say that Ford offers gruff advice that is put into practice in the final frame. It is a bit cheesy, but you will still leave the cinema smiling from ear to ear.