Movies You Should See: The Everyday Becomes A Work of Art in "American Splendor"

Roger Ebert called this movie, in his review, “just plain brilliant” and “American Splendor” is just plain brilliant. The story of the late Harvey Pekar, “American Splendor” acts as both a fictional adaptation of the story behind the cult comic book series, and a documentary at the same time. You might be asking yourself how that can be? Well, the movie cuts between the reenactment with Harvey Pekar played by Paul Giamatti, and his wife, played by Hope Davis, and the real Harvey Pekar sitting in a white room, talking about the actual story. It’s meta before meta was really a thing. It’s also one of my favorite films.

“American Splendor” is based on a comic book series written by Pekar, a file clerk from Cleveland, Ohio. The whole comic book series was based on his actual life. His story, though, becomes very unusual in a lot of parts. How did this file clerk become an icon of alternative comic books? It all happens because he meets real life alternative comic cartoonist Robert Crumb. He tells Crumb that the everyday stuff that happens to him can be a comic. Why not? Real life is pretty complicated stuff, he says.

What follows is scenes of the real Perkar talking, a great monologue by Giamatti to the camera and a live action/animated sequence where the animated Pekar yells at the real one in a thought bubble. “American Splendor” is an underrated film, but a great one. Though, the movie did receive an Oscar nod for best adapted screenplay, so there’s that.

I feel like with “American Movie: The Making of Northwestern” being my previous entry in this series, this is an interesting follow up. Working class American joes becoming part of the counterculture is a theme of both of these films, and both are brilliant examples of this.