I’m peering into a crystal ball and flash-forwarding to a theatrical showing of Steven Spielberg‘s The Fablemans, which began shooting last month.

I’m sitting in my favorite front-row seat and watching a solo scene with Gabriel LaBelle, whose “Sammy” character is based on the mid-teenaged Spielberg, a fledgling, naturally gifted filmmaker living with his family in early ’60s Arizona.

As Sammy enters his bedroom we see hazy, grayish milky streams of Arizona sunlight pouring through the partially curtained windows. And I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, this seems familiar.”

I can’t put my finger on it but I’ve seen several films with interior scenes that resemble this one.

I know that as a devoted filmgoer my life would seem…well, not “impossibly empty” but certainly diminished without grayish, alien-spaceship milky sunlight streaming through windows in the films that I see. I’ve adored this kind of cinematography for so many years. I loved it in Lincoln and I’ll love it next year when The Fablemans opens.

Thank God for small favors — at least The Fablemans isn’t being shot by Bradford Young.

“Milky haze all in my eyes / Don’t know if it’s day or night / You’ve got me blowing, blowing my mind / Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?” — from “Milky Haze,” written and performed by Jimi Hendrix.