Inventive forms and surprising visual style provide a clever portrait of a misanthropic comic book author.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published September 11, 2003
[Photo: New Line Features]
Paul Giamatti plays Harvey Pekar in American Splendor.
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The most original and perplexing 2003 film so far is American Splendor, a biography of a mundane life that would otherwise be ignored. Too many people did that to Harvey Pekar for too long and this movie, whether he likes it or not, is going to make him someone people notice. Maybe even care about.
Harvey is a misanthropic grump who turned his life's rut into a series of underground comic books ironically titledAmerican Splendor. I've never read any of the comics but this movie makes me want to seek them out. Harvey is what some folks would brand a loser, yet the awareness that they might be right is obviously his artistic strength. His story, if we believe this film and by all accounts we can, taps into that frustration common to everyone. It's just that most of us have more going on in our lives to distract us from it.
Not only does American Splendor feature an enormously unconventional hero, but directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini depict Harvey in a fascinating, unconventional way. Much of the film is structured like panels in a comic book. Indeed, several live action sequences look and sound like one trenchant panel after another.
But the filmmakers toy with reality even further by incorporating the real Harvey (along with several other characters in his life) alongside the actor playing him, Paul Giamatti. It's part of the inside joke that Harvey can't draw, so several other artists including R. Crumb illustrated his stories, each with their own physical interpretation of him. We get the real Pekar, the drawn Pekar, Giamatti's Pekar, even an actor (Donal Logue) playing Pekar in a stage version of his comics.
Somehow, from all that confusion, a clear portrait of a perversely splendid life emerges. Much of that is due to Giamatti's wonderfully restrained performance, never going as far over the edge as such psychosis could inspire. Giamatti is a dependable character actor (Private Parts, Planet of the Apes) becoming a serious Oscar contender before our eyes, by playing a real pip of a character.
Animation constantly intrudes upon reality; the cartoon Harvey goads Giamatti's Harvey into anger when stuck in a grocery checkout line, and thought balloons pop up to reveal his inner feelings. American Splendor is a nearly seamless convergence of two very different visual arts, not as splashy as the similar tack of The Secret Lives of Altar Boys but equally informative. Then Berman and Pulcini switch gears within cinema arts, speaking directly with the real Harvey (once with Giamatti eavesdropping out of character) like a documentary within a dramatization, culminating in a quasihappy ending.
The film's structure is thrilling even while the story gets bogged down with Harvey's one-note frustration. Harvey is the same grouch whether he's losing a second wife, meeting the next, Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis), building a career or facing a cancer threat. Each of those dramas is common in films, but Harvey's relentless aggression makes them seem fresh.
Using the real Harvey in the movie makes Giamatti's impersonation more impressive. The same goes for Davis' subdued tolerance that becomes an acting revelation when the real Joyce is presented. The introduction of something like love into Harvey's downbeat life comes out of left field, but Davis enables us to understand what they have in common and why they manage to stick together through a blur of disappointments. Even news of Harvey's cancer being beaten is greeted with muted emotion, as we expect it would be for two people so unhappy alone.
American Splendor will be too bleak for some viewers, and too episodic for others. But the rut the movie finds itself enduring until the final act is nothing compared to Harvey's life, an understanding that cures any cinematic ills. The movie enables us to empathize with a loser, to see our problems in his and to find a splendor of sorts in the most unlikely places.
American Splendor
Grade: A
Directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, James Urbaniak, Judah Frielander, Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Toby Radloff
Screenplay: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, based on the comic book series American Splendor by Harvey Pekar and Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner
