Martin Scorsese’s HUGO and Steven Spielberg’s THE FABELMANS would make a fascinating double-bil: one showing an artist in his late period exteriorising his love of cinema and the other interiorising it. Though THE FABELMANS starts a little saccharine for my tastes, the film matures along with Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) and goes on the same psychological journey from the naïve depiction of film as a medium for discovery of truth in the world to exploring how a director shapes reality through documentary editing and makes an active choice as to how their film portrays people and the world. The most poignant moments are where Spielberg reaches through the screen to point out to us how the pursuit of art has mediated the experience of his life for good—the final camera tilt—and ill—Sammy seeing himself in the mirror filming his parents’ divorce. David Lynch playing the greatest living filmmaker is meta perfection.