AMERICAN
SPLENDOR (2003)
You haven’t seen anything
quite like American Splendor
before, an exhilarating mixture of actors playing real people, these same
real people playing themselves, and comic book drawings of these real
people. What’s so
exhilarating for me is the wonderful and unexpected mixture of these three
elements, the drawings segueing into the live action and vice-versa. The comic book stories are
about Pekar’s real life experiences in which he does battle with all
kinds of villains who are really just ordinary people like Pekar but who
do vile things, at least from Pekar's perspective.
He’s
something of a misfit, yet his keen insight into the verities of
daily life make up for any personal oddities he has.
You want to know what his take on quotidian life is because his
oblique way of seeing things opens your own eyes to the funny, the absurd,
the touching. Life is totally
incomprehensible, he seems to be saying, yet this does not mean it isn’t
replete with meanings. I see
Pekar—at least Giamatti’s Pekar—as despondent and depressed, yet
unwilling to give up on life, because, who knows, he may actually learn
something. It keeps him going.
While Harvey's appears to
have a contempt for things—what the French call un mépris des choses—in
reality it's the banal and mundane which become the grist for his sardonic
humor. By including everything—himself, his wife, his friends, his
fellow workers, his phobias, his dreams and fears, in his books,
everything is reduced to absurdity, and so nothing is absurd. In the
final analysis, Harvey Pekar is a hopeful man.
The movie is also based on
the graphic comic book Our Cancer
Year by Joyce Brabner, Harvey’s wife, played here by the
In the
end, the "American Splendor" stories—and
this movie—are soaked in values
because they show us in detail the thingness of the world around us by
giving us exact, precise pictures and descriptions. Though these
pictures are set in the dingy neighborhoods of Cleveland, Harvey's home,
he lets us see, as T. S. Eliot writes of the poet, "beneath both
beauty and ugliness: to see the boredom and the horror and the
glory."
The supporting cast
is excellent; especially when you get to see the real people they portray
and realize it’s difficult to tell them apart.
In particular there’s the “world class nerd” Toby Radloff
(played by Judah Friedlander). When
we get to see the real Toby we just have to marvel at Friedlander's
performance.
Roger Ebert said that
“Movies like this seem to come out of nowhere, like free-standing
miracles.” I agree.
And you don’t have to be a comic book fan. This is one of the best
movies of the year. Why Paul
Giamatti did not get an Oscar nomination is beyond comprehension. Rated R for language.
written
and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
comments by Tony McRae
It’s the real-life story
of Harvey Pekar (played by Paul Giamatti and Harvey Pekar), a file clerk
in Cleveland who becomes a writer of a graphic comic book series called
“American Splendor” which became a very popular favorite in the 70s
and 80s. Pekar himself became
a kind of cult hero, appearing on the David Letterman Show several times,
sometimes with disastrous results.
wonderful
Hope Davis, who herself has the knack of reinventing her film
persona. She sees Harvey's faults,
but she also learns to see the world through his comics. This is
what drew her to him in the first place. As Harvey does battle with
himself and his adversaries, so Joyce can face her cancer.