Movie Review: American Splendor (2003)
American Splendor (2003)
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, Harvey Pekar, Shari Springer Berman, James Urbaniak, Judah Friedlander
Directed By: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
This was on Movie Central HD tonight, as it has been off and on for months now. There have been a few times when I considered watching it, but never managed to catch it, or just decided not to. I've grown a little weary of quirky indie movies of late, and since this movie has been mentioned in the same breath as Ghost World, I started to believe that it wouldn't be a movie for me. Heck, I wasn't even that big a fan of Paul Giamatti's other critical darling Sideways. But, it's another entry into the Comic Book Movie Index, so I went ahead and watched it.
American Splendor is part adaptation of the underground comic book of the same name (and the graphic novel Our Cancer Year), part biopic of the man who wrote the comics, Harvey Pekar. Which makes sense, because the comics are accounts of the life of Harvey Pekar, featuring Harvey Pekar as the main character interacting with the people in his life. In the comic, Pekar the character lives the life of Pekar the man, including the fact that Pekar the character writes a comic book about Pekar the man. Are you still with me?
It's all delightfully meta, and reflected perfectly and brilliantly in the movie. The movie is both an adaptation of the comic and the story of the comic, featuring scenes from the comic in both movie and comic book form (as covers and panels from the comic interact with the narrative). Taking this thread even further, Paul Giamatti stars as the movie character of Harvey Pekar, sometimes highlighted by pictures of the comic character Harvey Pekar, while the film is narrated, both in live action shots and voice overs, by the actual Harvey Pekar. So Pekar is shown talking about the movie based on his comic book based on him. It is as unique and interesting as it sounds, and is pulled off spectacularly by the cast and directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (each of whom play themselves filming the movie). The film gets even more sublime when telling of the time a play was made based on the comic book, showing Giamatti and co-star Hope Davis (playing Pekar's wife Joyce Brabner, co-author of Our Cancer Year) attending a play starring Donal Logue (The Tao of Steve) and Molly Shannon as Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, then the sequence is later narrated by the actual Pekar, punctuated by lines from the comic book based on Harvey and Joyce's experience of seeing themselves in a play. The film goes even one step further with its meta theme; in a particularly clever sequence that is too good to be spoiled here.
Beyond simply a gimmick, this makes the movie more than just an adaptation of the content of the comics, it also manages to adapt the spirit of the comics. If Harvey Pekar's comics are the stories of the everyday struggles in his life, then the Harvey Pekar movie must also be told through Pekar's eyes. It has to be self-referencing, because the comics are. Just imagine what the comic books about making the movie must be like.
As fantastic as this play on the reality of the film is, it doesn't make the film so quirky that it loses its focus as a story-telling device. This is the flaw of most quirky indie movies, that they're too clever by half and fall so in love with their tricks that they suck the heart out of their films, making their characters too eccentric to be identifiable as human beings. Pekar is an unusual man, to be sure, but his story is all about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, and thus he must be presented as an extraordinarily ordinary guy. He must be a character the audience can fall for, empathise with, and cheer to succeed.
He is, and a large amount of the credit goes to star Paul Giamatti, who turns in a brilliant performance as Pekar in perhaps his best acting performance of his career. Giamatti's Pekar is gruff, slovenly, neurotic, and winning. Giamatti's vocal performance alone makes the role a stand out. In the hands of a lesser performer, this movie could have easily devolved into a depressing tale of a sad little man. Instead, it's surprisingly upbeat in the end, and Giamatti manages to engage the viewer throughout what is a fairly low-key movie.
I was truly impressed by this movie, finding it to be one of the freshest, most unique films I've seen in a while. It's as charming and pleasing as it is impressive. The gimmicks are fun and interesting without overwhelming the rest of the movie, and the acting and direction are top notch.
4.5/5