Thinking of the line in Sunset Boulevard that silent film actors "had faces" in place of dialogue, and marveling again at Spielberg's skill with eyes as instruments of revelation.

Sure, the actors are talented, trained, and tested. But a director sets the scene and creates a dynamic of discovery, and this director knows a thing or two thousand about summoning awe and amazement, insight and epiphany.

Mitzi (Michelle Williams) loses balance at a woodland crossing, eyes moving from fright to relief, then giddy warmth to loving affection, gazing upward at family friend Bennie (Seth Rogen), caught in his embrace. Later in the movie, while Burt (Paul Dano) solely views a snapshot in hand, his eyelids peel back from an initial glance, pinching at the corners, as he reacts to figures discerned in deep background. And when Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle) finds himself in some director's waiting room, bulbs behind irises turn on and white orbs spill light, as his inner lenses focus on a long line of one sheet wonders--not yet seen by the audience--shining bright.

Spielberg trusts that wordless moments resonate, letting setups play out, suspense build, and mystery envelop. He goes beyond himself in that scene with Sammy, concluding a reverie round of movie posters with a repeat reference to a film that shares The Fabelmans' triangle motif. He then breaks the spell, upon a hurried entry of the lipstick-smudged director in question, with a scratching cutoff of another picture's soundtrack recording--music from one of the most memorable opening shots in cinema, a portal moving from dark to light--signaling a trifecta of open doors: filmic, comic, and metaphoric.

The Fabelmans is filled with tripart imagery, evoking the film's interpersonal, conceptual, and formative themes: from triangular windowpanes to three bandits framed within the open legs of a sheriff in Sammy's Boy Scout western; from fulcrums under boards exploding sand in his war movie to the triad of camera, seagulls, and victims at the beach; from a tripod of sticks suspending a cauldron over a campfire to the seesaw rocking of Mitzi cradled from a bough. My favorite: Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) miming a perceived self-rending dichotomy of family and art, then thrusting a finger of fate--swish-panned past the center angle of assembled Fabelmans--at Sammy, who defies the dictum with a Superman stance, legs spread wide and arms triangulated via hands on hips and elbows out.

In Spielberg's hands films tell stories within a story. Consider the close encounters that punctuate this picture, interaction where the stakes are high: Sammy's dialogues with Mitzi, Burt, Uncle Boris, Bennie, his sister Reggie, his high school antagonist Logan. Note, as well, a low-angle shot of Sammy gazing at an office window, affirming a threshold moment. It's a figurative doffing of the hat to a certain professional--himself no stranger to letting eyes do the talking--who engaged a kid in a discussion of art and disclosed particulars of perception that were of a piece with the young man's own unrelenting attention to detail. See it as a salute to one picture maker from another, a fellow pilgrim on the way to the horizon that is the silver screen.