FILM REVIEW
"American Splendor"
(Fine Line Features)

Entertainment
Art

By ANN FINSTAD

American Splendor has been named to multiple organizations and critic's 2003 top ten lists. It won Best Picture honors from the L.A. Film Critics Association. Yet unlike other small-yet-critically lauded films (Lost in Translation being a notable current example), it has gotten little mainstream public attention. Its recent DVD release may help to change that.

Based on the comic books and graphic novels of the same title by gruff everyman Harvey Pekar, the film American Splendor seamlessly blends its comic-book roots, excellent performances by Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis, and documentary-style footage of the real life Harvey and the people in his life, to create a fascinating portrait of a man, his life, and his work.

In the early 1970's, Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) has split up with his second wife and is working a dead-end job as a file clerk at a Cleveland Hospital when he comes up with the idea for "American Splendor", a comic book detailing the woes of an ornery curmudgeon, named (not coincidentally) Harvey Pekar. Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak), an underground comic artist and Harvey's friend, teams up with Pekar to illustrate Harvey's tales of woe, featuring anecdotes about standing behind old Jewish ladies at the supermarket to the collection of eccentrics that populate his work environment.

Through his comic work, he meets his third wife, Joyce (Hope Davis, in aGolden Globe nominated role), and gains a following, all while keepinghis file clerk position. By the 1980's, he (as well as the people around him) have gained cult celebrity status. Harvey appears many times on David Letterman's show. (NBC must have loosened its strings somewhat, as actual Letterman footage of the real Harvey is inserted into the film at these points.) His coworker Toby, an unapologetic "nerd" who speaks in a nasal drone, is featured in an MTV commercial.

Yet all this media attention fails to change Harvey's pessimism and all-around poor attitude that make his comic character so compelling. When he learns he has cancer, Joyce encourages him to chronicle his pain, and together they co-author "Our Cancer Year."

It's hard to say that the story ends happily, because Harvey Pekar is never a happy man. Yet although Harvey's life is not one of fairy tales, it is a compelling story of one everyday man who details an unflinching portrait of everyday life.

Directors Shari Stringer Berman and Robert Pulcini stay true to the comic roots of the story, presenting comic-style captions and even an illustrated Harvey amid the live action at times.

American Splendor melds the fiction and reality of Harvey's worlds: the comics, the actors portraying the characters, and the real life people they are all based on, in wonderful circular fashion. In the end, it's hard to tell where the myth of the comic anti-hero begins and the real man ends. One need not be an "American Splendor" fan, or even a comic fan, to enjoy this movie, although afterwards, you may desire to go out and read two (or ten).