So-called "underground comics" have been around for a long time but they took on new life in the 60s when anger at racism and the Vietnam War led to new strips, some engagingly pornographic. The rise of an alternative press, largely bicoastal, provided readers with often sharp and incisive and not infrequently insipid comics.
Complementing the regular appearance of topical newspaper comic strips, comics also sprouted in similar form but not in content to the eagerly anticipated ten cent publications of my childhood. Stores specializing in these comics appeared in urban areas and near some campuses.
Into this scene came Harvey Pekar, the anti-hero from America's Heartland, along, later, with his wife, Joyce Brabner. "American Splendor," a comic series still treasured by segments of an aging population, was his contribution to a divided and troubled nation. And this movie is a minor gem of cultural recollection.
The film starts with Harvey as a little boy trick-or-treating in his Cleveland neighborhood. His companions are all decked out as Superheroes but Harvey is in ordinary street clothes which prompts questioning, perhaps a challenge, by a would-be neighbor with a tray of treats. Harvey is less a committed non-conformist than he is simply out of the peer jetstream.
Segue to a twice divorced Harvey who lives in an apartment dominated by LPs and books - and trash - and employed as a Veterans Administration medical center file clerk. As portrayed by Paul Giamatti, Harvey isn't desperately unhappy or even neurotically despondent. He has a life but it isn't complete. He doesn't rage against his fixed station in life but he wonders: Why?
The real Harvey turned his introspective queries about ordinary life into a crude series of comics (he couldn't draw for offal) which a successful illustrator-friend recognized as having marketing potential. While not anti-existentialist, Harvey's stories bucked a pseudointellectual trend by highlighting without despair his character's everyday life. The result, "American Splendor," appeared to sell well without bringing any significant income to its creator.
The "American Splendor" series of comics adumbrated the similar pictorial descriptions of "Mr. Urban Everyman" that now appear in formerly alternative but now mainstream papers like New York's The Village Voice.
Into Harvey's bleak (and well-filmed) pad and life comes Joyce Brabner, a comics fan who connects from afar with the Pekar persona. Played with insight and vitality by Hope Davis, Joyce sojourns to Cleveland to meet Harvey and never leaves. They marry.
In a land dominated by TV where freaks and saints both can enjoy fifteen minutes of fame, Pekar becomes an irregular guest on late night national TV shows. The irony, beautifully shown here, is that the TV interludes provide brief occupancy of luxury hotel suites while Harvey's imperative to keep his day job never ceases.
Joyce and Harvey have a close but quixotic relationship. She wants kids, he doesn't. He accepts living in Cleveland, she needs to dash off to the globe's tinderboxes to aid children in crisis.
A true crisis for Harvey is a cancer diagnosis with the uncertainty of outcome darkening the couple's life. His plight is depicted with short but painful realism. As both resistance to the disease and a new artistic partnership, Joyce and Harvey write "Our Cancer Year," a comic strip account of what was hardly a comic time.
Veering between comedy and drama, Harvey and Joyce's story is uneven but so is life and "American Splendor" captures that reality beautifully. A clever approach that works has the real Harvey, and to a lesser extent the real Joyce, alternate with Giamatti and Davis in telling their tales. The real Harvey is less dramatic than his counterpart but his wry and disarming irony suggests a man who has managed to stay in control of his life. Hope Davis, uncharacteristically un-blond, looks a lot like the actual Joyce.
Giamatti captures Harvey's aligning and merging of a unique and insightful creativity with an ordinary life populated by a variety of friends and co-workers all with their own quirks. Harvey doesn't try to change them: he simply incorporates the gang into his stories. They're the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" of the 60s and 70s underground comics scene.
Well-filmed and acted, "American Splendor" is worth seeing. It brings back memories for some and insight for all.
7/10.
Complementing the regular appearance of topical newspaper comic strips, comics also sprouted in similar form but not in content to the eagerly anticipated ten cent publications of my childhood. Stores specializing in these comics appeared in urban areas and near some campuses.
Into this scene came Harvey Pekar, the anti-hero from America's Heartland, along, later, with his wife, Joyce Brabner. "American Splendor," a comic series still treasured by segments of an aging population, was his contribution to a divided and troubled nation. And this movie is a minor gem of cultural recollection.
The film starts with Harvey as a little boy trick-or-treating in his Cleveland neighborhood. His companions are all decked out as Superheroes but Harvey is in ordinary street clothes which prompts questioning, perhaps a challenge, by a would-be neighbor with a tray of treats. Harvey is less a committed non-conformist than he is simply out of the peer jetstream.
Segue to a twice divorced Harvey who lives in an apartment dominated by LPs and books - and trash - and employed as a Veterans Administration medical center file clerk. As portrayed by Paul Giamatti, Harvey isn't desperately unhappy or even neurotically despondent. He has a life but it isn't complete. He doesn't rage against his fixed station in life but he wonders: Why?
The real Harvey turned his introspective queries about ordinary life into a crude series of comics (he couldn't draw for offal) which a successful illustrator-friend recognized as having marketing potential. While not anti-existentialist, Harvey's stories bucked a pseudointellectual trend by highlighting without despair his character's everyday life. The result, "American Splendor," appeared to sell well without bringing any significant income to its creator.
The "American Splendor" series of comics adumbrated the similar pictorial descriptions of "Mr. Urban Everyman" that now appear in formerly alternative but now mainstream papers like New York's The Village Voice.
Into Harvey's bleak (and well-filmed) pad and life comes Joyce Brabner, a comics fan who connects from afar with the Pekar persona. Played with insight and vitality by Hope Davis, Joyce sojourns to Cleveland to meet Harvey and never leaves. They marry.
In a land dominated by TV where freaks and saints both can enjoy fifteen minutes of fame, Pekar becomes an irregular guest on late night national TV shows. The irony, beautifully shown here, is that the TV interludes provide brief occupancy of luxury hotel suites while Harvey's imperative to keep his day job never ceases.
Joyce and Harvey have a close but quixotic relationship. She wants kids, he doesn't. He accepts living in Cleveland, she needs to dash off to the globe's tinderboxes to aid children in crisis.
A true crisis for Harvey is a cancer diagnosis with the uncertainty of outcome darkening the couple's life. His plight is depicted with short but painful realism. As both resistance to the disease and a new artistic partnership, Joyce and Harvey write "Our Cancer Year," a comic strip account of what was hardly a comic time.
Veering between comedy and drama, Harvey and Joyce's story is uneven but so is life and "American Splendor" captures that reality beautifully. A clever approach that works has the real Harvey, and to a lesser extent the real Joyce, alternate with Giamatti and Davis in telling their tales. The real Harvey is less dramatic than his counterpart but his wry and disarming irony suggests a man who has managed to stay in control of his life. Hope Davis, uncharacteristically un-blond, looks a lot like the actual Joyce.
Giamatti captures Harvey's aligning and merging of a unique and insightful creativity with an ordinary life populated by a variety of friends and co-workers all with their own quirks. Harvey doesn't try to change them: he simply incorporates the gang into his stories. They're the "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" of the 60s and 70s underground comics scene.
Well-filmed and acted, "American Splendor" is worth seeing. It brings back memories for some and insight for all.
7/10.