‘The Holdovers’ Paul Giamatti Wows in This Comic Book Adaptation

The Big Picture

• Giamatti’s portrayal of Pekar in
  American Splendor
  transformed him into a leading character actor.
• The film creatively merges reality and fiction, capturing Pekar’s complex, emotionally traumatic nature.
• American Splendor
  serves as a unique comic book adaptation, maintaining Pekar’s authentic artistry through Giamatti’s performance.

Nowadays, for many, the comic book movie genre is synonymous with unoriginal and uninspired filmmaking. While not the fault of the medium itself, the genre has been financially exploited to such a degree that studios have become afraid to take creative chances with its superhero properties. There was a time when, now more than 20 years ago, adapting a comic book for the big screen was an exciting prospect. For better or worse, the ingenuity of Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogies led to the superhero monoculture of the 2010s. In 2003, the comic book to big screen pipeline was at its most ambitious when one film took a chance on the subversive and underground stories of Harvey Pekar, the subject of the overlooked American Splendor, a film that also raised the profile of one of our most beloved actors, Paul Giamatti.

Paul Giamatti Captures the Peculiar Fame of Harvey Pekar

Pekar, who lacks the household name recognition of an artist like Stan Lee, is nonetheless a maverick of the medium. While comic books and graphic novels primarily focus on stories of escapism and fantasy, Pekar’s stories, notably American Splendor, are autobiographical adult dramas centered around the attrition of everyday life and the mundane struggles of growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Cleveland. His cantankerous, rabble-rousing behavior, demonstrated in his frequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, may distract from the touching, slice-of-life characterizations of humanity in his writing.

The casting of Paul Giamatti as Pekar was an ingenious decision. Giamatti, a recurring character actor seen in many beloved films of the 1990s, including Saving Private Ryan and The Truman Show, was too talented and unmistakable to be disregarded by the mainstream. Anyone who watched him face off against Howard Stern in Private Parts as the disreputable program director, “Pig Vomit,” would know that Giamatti is a true wrecking force.

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, a filmmaking pair most known for documentaries, American Splendor is not your traditional biopic or comic book adaptation, or your traditional narrative feature film as a whole. Following the life of Harvey Pekar (Giamatti), a file clerk at a local VA hospital who enters the underground comic scene and develops a cult following, American Splendor invigorates two genres stymied by clichés and formulas: the comic book movie and the biopic. Within the narrative, the dramatization is interrupted by testimony and narration by the real Harvey Pekar, as well as hand-drawn animation paying homage to the artist’s work. The film is free of a traditional structure. If anything, it flows through the unique mind and thought process of the film’s subject via the real figure and Giamatti’s exhibition of Pekar. Scenes of mundanity coexist with formative life moments, such as Pekar’s creative partnership with the esteemed underground artist, and the subject of the celebrated Terry Zwigoff documentary, Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak), and his relationship with his wife, Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis).

‘American Splendor’ Paved the Way for Paul Giamatti’s Career

Giamatti appears to be a strong contender to win Best Actor for his performance as the alienated curmudgeon history professor in The Holdovers. Decades before, and a year following the release of American Splendor, Giamatti played a downbeat wine connoisseur desperate for hope and affection in another Alexander Payne film, Sideways. The dramatization of Harvey Pekar is a mix and match of this brand of character that has defined the actor’s screen persona. Even more so than the critically acclaimed Sideways, American Splendor utilized Giamatti’s neurotic cynicism. His willingness to be non-cinematic with his disturbing mental psyche, while still making his characters lovable and sympathetic, made him a perfect complement to Payne’s exploration of middle-aged angst. The actor’s prevalent screen persona, the kind that is overlooked in mainstream cinema, is why he has developed such a passionate following.

Altogether, American Splendor serves as the blueprint for Giamatti’s future success as a character actor who, in the right script, can be elevated as a leading man. Berman and Pulcini’s film requires an untapped force to match the bizarre likeness and candor of Pekar. The directing pair’s documentary background allowed the film to aim for an emotional truth in their story. Giamatti may not resemble Pekar’s physical appearance, but he certainly transformed into Pekar through attitude alone. In place of a physical alteration, Giamatti’s vocal modulation of Pekar’s scratchy voice helps disorient the shift between Pekar’s dramatization and the real Pekar within the film. In the film, we see Pekar struggle with his identity, pondering whether his existence is to serve himself as a human being or a creation in a comic book series. The dual identification of Giamatti’s Pekar and the real person expresses this conflict in the execution of the film.

Paul Giamatti’s Performance Is Emotionally Complex

Pekar, through his audacious stories and brazen performances on late-night talk shows, was an enigmatic figure. Was his persona all a bit to embody American Splendor? What compelled him to express himself through a fantastical medium? Berman and Pulcini attempt to answer these mysteries by merging fiction and non-fiction, but Giamatti’s performance informs Pekar’s eccentricities while simultaneously understanding his emotional plight. Beneath the impressive expression of formalism lies a nuanced and complex performance by Giamatti.

Giamatti stayed true to Pekar’s overarching approach to storytelling by avoiding overt romanticism. While the real Pekar may deny such sentimentality, Giamatti’s Pekar longs for a world that accepts him for who he is and his craft. Working against his good heart is his inability to convey his emotions deep down. Emotions that are, oftentimes, simmering with hostility. The performance solemnly comments on the emotionally traumatic nature of art by demonstrating Pekar’s melancholy and loneliness as something inflicted by his lower-class environment, as well as spotlighting the indulgent, self-imposed egoism of such artists.

To American Splendor‘s benefit, the film aligns itself as a comic book adaptation rather than a formulaic biographical story of the rise of Harvey Pekar. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini grasp the framework of comic books and their respective text as well as, if not more than, the most widely seen and beloved superhero adaptations. The film not only evokes the distinct energy of its source material, but it captures the curious imagination of its creator. While Pekar’s vision was purposefully restricted to his everyday life, the interpretation of his surroundings could only be properly conveyed through the creative freedom of comics. By ambitiously dramatizing Harvey Pekar’s life through supplemental archive footage, author testimony, and hand-drawn animation, American Splendor exists as an original comic book in film form. This is all attributed to Paul Giamatti’s subtly observed, but radiant performance of a man whose outlandish persona can only be fully understood in a medium designed for superheroes.

American Splendor is available to watch on Max in the U.S.

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