Harvey Pekar is a shlub. He'd be the first one to admit it. Catching sight of his face in a mirror, he thinks, "Now there's a reliable disappointment." Whether Harvey is lovable is a different question. See American Splendor and decide for yourself.

Of course, to do that, you'll have to deal with the question, "Which Harvey Pekar?" There are the various Harveys as drawn by Robert Crumb and other artists in the comic books American Splendor and Our Cancer Year, on which the film is based. There is the cinemized Harvey played by the gifted Paul Giamatti. There is the real life Harvey Pekar, who reads the voiceovers. There is even a dramatized Harvey Pekar, an actor playing him in a West Coast musical also based on the comic books; Giamatti's Pekar watches him in an artificial-looking re-enactment of those performances.

Even the "real" Harvey Pekar has at least three identities. In addition to the cranky soundstage Harvey, there is the softer Harvey at his real retirement party from his go-nowhere job as a VA file clerk. And then there is the genuinely hostile Harvey, preserved on videotape, who appeared on a talk show called Late Night with a guy named Letterman.

Every act of framing is an abstraction, a subtraction, and ultimately a lie. (Harvey says of Giamatti, "He don't even look like me.") But it is only in putting a frame around something that one can create art. And the filmmakers (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) have certainly done this, creating an artifact that demands compare-and-contrast with the recent Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Some would also say that the frame is both necessary and sufficient for art. After seeing this movie, I'm inclined to agree.

It's Giamatti's abstraction that is the most compelling, of course. He finds entire scenes in just being Harvey walking down the shabby streets of Cleveland, his walk a head-centered slouch, his lip curled as if he'd just smelled something bad, his haunted eyes.

And Hope Davis just keeps on doing her good work, here as Harvey's wife Joyce Brabner. You can never have too much Hope Davis.

posted: 5:26:31 PM