American Splendor | Review

Biopic is a marvelous celebration of the life of a loser.

Festivals are a great place for 2 things, finding a gem in the rough or getting a sneak peak on a favored film and for me it came with the closing film at this year’s edition of the Montreal Comedia film festival. You’ve probably heard of it, since it picked up awards at Sundance and Cannes and got nabbed by indie featherweight film distributor Fine Line Features.

American Splendor is known for being a comic book of a non-Spiderman type of stories and is now a film about the celebration of the loser, perhaps the best one since William H. Macy character roles in Magnolia and Fargo and Steve Buscemi in Ghost World who oddly enough has a lot in common with this film’s protagonist. This is a generous portrait played by Paul Giamatti (Man on the Moon) who gives us a man in misery and showcases every single possible degree of living a life in a depressive yet optimistic state. Pieced together with a non-fictionalized purpose, this is the story of one man who when Giamatti is not acting his life out before the cameras is actually being documented by the one and only and accidentally famous Harvey Pekar. Providing glimpses into this man’s intellect with a little cut-out animation and some Q and A style documentary is this directorial and writing collaboration by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini whom find the splendor in the closest thing to what one would call a pointless life. The duo is able to combine a low-brow original approach to showcasing their subject matter and do so inside a devilishly funny context giving Ang Lee a run for his money as the best film adaptation of a comic book of the year. The film really cranks out the ideas once Pekar decides to leave his couch and make some stick figure drawings and it is then that the revenge of the nerd becomes more than just a matinee movie but a motto to this file clerk, Late Night Show regular, the author and subject of an underground comic book. Rising to an iconic status level he is either the butt end of Cleveland jokes or is the smart cartoonist who happens to have a great friend in a guy by the name of Crumb, who also happens to be the subject of a great little documentary.

The story takes us through his quotidian and manic depressive journey from the kid with no Halloween custom to the adult with a marketed doll retailing for $34.99. Ultimately what this feature becomes is an intimate character study about the type of person that we would probably tend to avoid starting a conversation with, but it is his relationships with others as in his devoted wife Hope Davis (About Schmidt) and nerd friend which provides the viewer with a close-up view of a cycle of life which come across like an endless cycle of cruel jokes. The narration with a sort of agonizing Edward Burns voice and a Charlie Brown jazzy film score couldn’t be any more funnier, and Giamatti couldn’t be any better than he is in this brilliant performance about a subject who apparently makes him chuckle a couple as witnessed in this odd and hard to describe scene which shows the two friends and subjects of the film at a films set food table being watched by the actors who are portraying them. The strength of the picture is how filmmakers Berman and Pulcini blur the line between Giamatti and Pekar alternating the spirit of one character a theme which is commented by Pekar’s own concern about himself as a true person or just a cartoon figure.

If you’re clinically depressed or need a happy character to give meaning to your film experience then avoid this biography at all costs, but if you want a piece of nihilistic cake then I suggest prescribing this dark humor medicine. However, the biggest question besides how audiences will react to American Splendor, is will Pekar return to the late show?

Rating 3.5 stars