American Splendor | Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter

American Splendor | Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter | An offbeat movie about an offbeat kind of man

DVDs:

American Splendor

	American Splendor Chris Ambrose, Nick Baxter HBO Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 128 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

ordinary hero

Based upon the real life story of Harvey Pekar. Pekar spent most of his life as a file clerk in a VA hospital in Cleveland, then became the most unlikely celebrity when he created the comic series American Splendor. Clearly, this quintessential misanthrope could write about what every day people experience. The film intersperses the drama with real interviews with Pekar, his wife and colleagues, along with animated comics.

An offbeat movie about an offbeat kind of man

This is really a great film about Harvey Pekar, the underground comic book writer who created the comic book series "American Splendor". I'm surprised this movie hasn't garnered more critical attention than it has. The movie basically takes you from the end of Harvey's second marriage up to the point of his retirement as a file clerk. Pekar is living a life of quiet desperation - everything in his life is generic. The film lends a dingy quality to Pekar's surroundings that really gives it that "garage sale" look right down to the light fixtures in his apartment. Even the supermarkets and restaurants Harvey frequent make K-mart look classy. Unlike his friends and coworkers though, he is painfully aware of the reality of his life. He has a moment of clarity one day while waiting in line at the grocery store behind a woman who is arguing over why she should pay 1.50 for six glasses that are marked two dollars, when he thinks of a way to strike out at all of this - he decides to document his feelings in a comic. Unfortunately, Harvey can't draw. He comes up with the narrative, but is only able to show stick figures as the actual characters in the drawings. Harvey's big break is that he has become friends with underground comic Robert Crumb before Crumb was famous and the two were just a couple of "ordinary" guys looking for bargains at Cleveland rummage sales. Crumb is impressed with the statement Harvey is trying to make and agrees to do the illustrations, thus the comic "American Splendor" is born.

To me, the best part of this movie is the love story between Harvey and his third wife Joyce. These two people are just weird enough to make it work. What makes it work is that they have staked out their own individual claims to different enough territories in the land of weird that their respective neuroses don't bump into one another too badly, as had happened in Harvey's past marriages. Harvey is a man who has very un-mundane statements to make about his mundane world, but doesn't have any real illusions about changing it. Joyce is a self-diagnosed depressed anemic who has memorized the DSM 3 and is therefore happy to diagnose people with personality disorders and then pretty much takes them as she finds them, in spite of her claims of being a reformer. Because neither one wants to change the other, the relationship works.

The film is really cleverly done, with comic book illustrations showing what Pekar is thinking in various situations along with narration and a couple of interviews with the actual Pekar and his wife interspersed throughout the film giving it a real feeling of authenticity. Paul Giamatti is simply marvelous as the caustic "warts and more" Harvey Pekar. How often do you see an actor share the screen with the person he is playing, as happens in this film, and not even notice a blip in continuity? His performance is that good. Giamatti certainly deserves better than playing supporting roles in films like "Big Fat Liar". Kudos also to James Urbaniak for his small role as artist and illustrator Robert Crumb. For the small amount of time he is on the screen he really captures the essence of the guy.

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Splendor With Some Grass

Begin with a doomed man - Harvey Pekar. Put him in a doomed city - Cleveland. Give him the ultimate dead-end job - file clerk at a VA Hospital. It sounds like the beginning of a really horrifying Kafka novel, a study in existential despair devoid of color, joy, passion, or meaning.

On one level that's exactly what it is; part of Pekar's charm is that he has unapologetically flushed away his American dream. Pekar embraces failure the way mothers embrace children; failure is his best friend and most trusted ally. There are no shiny cars in his future, no prom queens. The vanities that most of us pursue with blind devotion are of no interest to him.

But this complete lack of ambition is precisely what frees Pekar to be so blindingly honest about the world around him, able to chronicle the most pedestrian activities with a sly, sardonic sneer. Whenever we are in danger of believing that Pekar is looking down at life with supercilious revulsion, we are quickly reminded that he reserves the bulk of his contempt for himself. Pekar is no mere misanthrope; he is an alien in our midst.

To embody such an improbable being takes acting genius, and Paul Giamatti delivers an Oscar caliber performance. Not only does he make this sport of nature believable, he makes him likeable - something of a minor miracle. Indeed, American Splendor ends up being an emotionally compelling film, it resonates truth at every turn. You may go your whole life without ever meeting people like this, (and you'd probably be happier as a result), but you will care about them, and cheer their triumphs - even though these triumphs can only be viewed under a microscope.

This is a rare, bizarre, and thoroughly enchanting film.

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Pretty good movie

This guy IS my brother. Got it for him for a gift; I hope he likes it.

Movie About A Persistent Egomaniac

Harvey Pekar is a man of marginal talent who, through sheer bloody single mindedness aka persistent egomania, has made something of a name for himself. Working with his significantly more talented friend R. Crumb, Pekar has put out a number of "underground" comic books about his mundane life as a working stiff.

One of the more unusual features of this unusual movie about an unusual man has Pekar writing for his comic book commenting on Paul Giamatti's performance as Pekar. This movie is quite unpredictable and as such is quite unlike anything that you have ever seen before.

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