It's no secret that I'm a sucker for off-the-wall comic book adaptations (see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Ghost World, and Sin City), and American Splendor is no exception. Paul Giamatti is (mostly) Harvey Pekar, a file clerk at the local VA hospital. It's about as banal as it gets, but his conversations with colorful coworkers offer some respite form the boredom. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz music. His apartment is a shrine to the best of media, filled to the brim with maybe thousands of books and LPs, and he's always searching for more to add to his collection. It's this searching that leads Harvey to a junk sale where he meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist. When Crumb finds international acclaim for his comics, it becomes inspiration for Harvey to create his own brand of adult comic books that end up becoming an unflinching self-portrait of his life. As he gains fame, he meets people on the way, one of which is Joyce Barber (Hope Davis, mostly), a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they navigate the strangeness of Harvey's celebrity status.
When this film was released, Paul Giamatti was still a year away from the film that would be considered his breakthrough performance, and it is a mystery to me as to why this role was not his big break. Giamatti wears loneliness well here, carrying a scowl that only changes when he feels the need to grimace. But despite all this, he magically manages to find a lovable soul in the strange and estranged Harvey Pekar. From time to time, Harvey is played by the real Harvey Pekar himself, as well as by actors in a fragment of a stage play within the film, and also line drawings. But Giamatti is the main actor behind the hero, and the most real one as well. It's part traditional feature, part documentary, part animated film, and entirely wild. There is absolutely nothing conventional about the narrative, and yet somehow the mess of it all comes together to make something wickedly entertaining. Sometimes the craziness of the story is part of why it’s so fascinating.
When this film was released, Paul Giamatti was still a year away from the film that would be considered his breakthrough performance, and it is a mystery to me as to why this role was not his big break. Giamatti wears loneliness well here, carrying a scowl that only changes when he feels the need to grimace. But despite all this, he magically manages to find a lovable soul in the strange and estranged Harvey Pekar. From time to time, Harvey is played by the real Harvey Pekar himself, as well as by actors in a fragment of a stage play within the film, and also line drawings. But Giamatti is the main actor behind the hero, and the most real one as well. It's part traditional feature, part documentary, part animated film, and entirely wild. There is absolutely nothing conventional about the narrative, and yet somehow the mess of it all comes together to make something wickedly entertaining. Sometimes the craziness of the story is part of why it’s so fascinating.