The Fabelmans 4K review

Feb 08, 2023- Permalink

Director Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans is a very personal film for the director. Echoing his childhood and love of film, he had been thinking about the idea for decades but was wary to make it then as he didn’t want elements of the story to hurt his parents. When both his parents had passed, he felt it was the time to tell the story. Universal has released the movie on 4K and I had a chance to take a look.

The 2160p HEVC / H.265 encoded native 4K digital transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It’s a beautiful presentation with excellent clarity and detail in facial features, textiles, sets and environments. The colour palette is natural and pleasing though skin tones sometimes appear a little cold. The HDR helps punch up some of the tones and specular highlights. Black levels are deep and detail is not lost in the darker scenes, which is very important in this film as so many scenes take place in darkened rooms lit only by a projector. There’s no sign of digital noise or compression artifacts.

On the audio side of things, you have the choice of an English Dolby TrueHD 7.1 soundtrack as well as a Spanish Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 track and a French Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Subtitles are available for English SDH, French, and Spanish. The soundscape uses the surrounds to put you into the scenes in a natural way. This isn’t a pounding action film, but the subwoofer adds a nice natural presence to various moments. John Williams’ score is lush and dynamic and dialogue is clear and centred.

Besides the 4K disc, the set comes with a Blu-ray copy and a digital code. Three extras cover the personal journey in writing and producing the film, a look at the casting, and a piece covering various elements of the production.

The Fabelmans is a love letter to Spielberg’s family and his passion for cinema. Wonderful performances coupled with excellent audio and video means The Fabelmans is highly recommended.