Steven Spielberg on Age, Mortality and How the Pandemic ‘Gave Me the Courage‘ to Tackle Buried Traumas in ’The Fabelmans’

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Steven Spielberg has confessed that the coronavirus pandemic forced him to reckon with age and mortality, acknowledging that his fears are what drove him to make his multi-Oscar-nominated film “The Fabelmans.” “The fear I felt about the pandemic gave me the courage to tell my personal story,” Spielberg said during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday.

The director, who has not participated in many press events this awards season, will receive the festival’s honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement Tuesday night before a screening of his semi-autobiographical look at growing up as a film-obsessed teenager. “The Fabelmans” is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including in the directing, writing and best picture categories.

Describing the honor as “a tremendous high point in my life,” Spielberg mused on how the Berlinale laurels forced the famously workaholic filmmaker to switch gears. “The honor about a lifetime achievement award is just simply that it forces you to do something I don’t often do: it forces me to reflect,” he said. “Reflecting means I’m not moving forward.

For me, when I reflect, it means I’m spending too much time in neutral, just remembering. “That’s in a sense what a lifetime achievement award does: It sets you back into the past — whether you want to go there or not,” he added.