Things I Learned Watching “American Splendor”
1. My life isn’t all that bad.
2. There’s a lid for every pot.
Both of these lessons are important ones for me right now. But even without the lessons, this is an off-kilter gem, with great performances by Hope Davis and especially Paul Giamatti as comic writer and general crank Harvey Pekar. “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff,” says Giamatti as Pekar, and the movie does a beautiful job of illustrating the point.
The mixture of the real people with their characters was a fine line to walk, and they managed to pull that off too. After all, when you’ve written a famous comic book about yourself, and had that comic turned into both a play and a movie, your life is already a strange blend of reality and imagination. So the gamble works.
Highly recommended.