pardon me for being terribly late in encountering this film, but i’ve already got enough punishment on my own, for disbelieving that it’d take me this long to witness and indulge looking at a comic literally translated on a big screen, it was initially transferred to the medium although i only managed to grab its dvd, to an extremely pleasant result.

“one visually arresting film”, and such a compliment does justice to describe a story of harvey pekar and his life from zero to become a hero while maintaining his zero-support job. it is not everyday we get to see a famous comic writer who keeps his daily job as a file clerk, but that’s the whole point of his life as he said, “you’ve got to keep on working and something might bound at the end.”

now, if you feel that my penchant towards this film is due to the identification of myself towards the character, i can’t agree more that i have certain weakness towards films portraying born-loser characters who take a great deal amount in his life before achieving anything he desires in life. and if you are that quick to notice that these kind of characters are often portrayed by paul giamatti (who knocks me off my feet for his showcase of terrifying acting skill here) as what he does in “sideways”, well, pretty much he’s got a perfect figure for that.

but the point does not lie on merely having these often-picked-on characters on screen. what makes “american splendor”, be it as comics, film, and play at a mediocre result intriguing should be credited to its daring ability to present the real life truthfully, and nothing can be more appealing to our emotion than things that we encounter in daily life. surely it gets dramatized as chances are you won’t have haunting jazz scores while we see a doctor or being hospitalized to get a treatment, yet above these background, we get to witness how our social life starts getting diminished when we get older, or how scary it is to be lonely whenever our loved ones go away. as blatant and harsh things could be in real life, harvey pekar demonstrates an impossible feat: to be true to one’s own self at times when compromising fame is much preferred.

how shari springer berman and robert pulcini captures the essence of the compelling point above while maintaining the comical spirit of harvey’s original works is purely a film magic.

how paul giamatti and hope davis give a cringe on my skin over their nail-biting portrayals as harvey and joyce brabner show us their faith in these real-life characters, thay the two actors do not only imitate, that they inject their own skillfuly crafted acting to inherit the characters inside out.

how i love the film is obvious.