American Splendor

Neither a straight documentary nor a traditional Hollywood biopic, American Splendor combines both approaches in telling the story of underground comic legend Harvey Pekar. Documentary filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini artfully sketch Pekar's rise from a scuffling Cleveland file clerk to a still-scuffling Cleveland file clerk who finds a modest level of fame and, more importantly, the love of a good woman who shares in his myriad obsessions. Berman and Pulcini manage this partially through interviews and file footage of Pekar and wife Joyce Brabner and partially through scenes where the couple are portrayed by Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis. Crucially, the actors never simply mimic their real-life counterparts: in a brilliant small role, James Urbaniak portrays Pekar's old friend and artistic inspiration Robert Crumb as the impossibly cool hipster he must have seemed to Pekar in the '60s instead of the tetchy grump the artist has always portrayed himself as. This cross-pollination between art and life, the way they eventually intertwine for the autobiographical artist, becomes the movie's primary theme, and the filmmakers ultimately come down—as Pekar always did—on the side of life over art.