American Splendor

American Splendor features Paul Giamatti, playing Harvey Pekar, the author of the autobiographical comics American Splendor. I found American Splendor to be very similar to the documentary “Crumb”. This shouldn’t be a great surprise, however, as Pekar and Crumb were close friends, and Crumb actually illustrated many of Pekar’s novels. What to me seamed to be congruent between the two films was the characters that were featured. Again, this shouldn’t be a shocker as Crumb and Pekar were friends, and it should be unsurprising that the two would rub off on each other.

The film, I feel, was very well constructed. I feel like they did a great job at tying in personal history, artistic style, and narrative, to make a piece that was coherent, entertaining, and accurate the man and his comics. I also feel that the film was cast exceptionally well. Giamatti always does a great job at playing run down, depressed characters; in this particular role all Giamatti needed to change in his acting style was to amp up the weirdness. Other people, such as Joyce Brabner and Toby Radloff were cast by very skilled actors. When I saw the actors, and then the actual people they were portraying, I was shocked at how well they captured the likeness.

Pekar, Brabner, and Radloff all have very distinct personalities and mannerisms; that the film was comprised of such unique personalities contributes a certain peculiarity towards the film. Ultimately, this peculiarity coupled with the general melancholy of Pekar led to me receiving the film poorly. I walked away from this film respecting how effectively and artistically it communicated the life and art of Pekar, but feeling a bit unsettled and depressed no less. While it was well constructed, the movie still focused on a very odd, frustrated, and depressed man, and therefore was by no means a very light watch.

There were points of this movie that I did enjoy however. In building up to his meeting of his would be wife Joyce Brabner, and the beginnings of his career as a comic author, we are shown the struggles of Pekar. This of course, just equates to a greater amount of emotional impact when good fortune find Pekar. I do not feel as though this film balanced out the negative aspects of Pekar with his positives, however, and the end result of this is that I found myself annoyed with Pekar and his struggles, instead of sympathizing with him.