Like a 100-watt radio station, broadcasting to the dozens...
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| Notes on the Atrocities Like a 100-watt radio station, broadcasting to the dozens... |
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Monday, February 23, 2004 There was a fairly decent group of good movies this year, but only four I actually considered as candidates for the Grand Jeffy. The first candidate arrived in the fall, when I saw American Splendor, the most original American film I've seen since Memento. Here's a review that originally appeared at Open Source Politics.
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Harvey Pekar is an choleric everyman who has spent his life shambling the gray and grim streets of Cleveland, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the unbearable heaviness of being a clerk. He is overweight, depressive, unfulfilled--in short, your average working stiff.
But while the directors chose to knit together documentary and biopic, their point isn't an intellectual "nature of truth" thesis. They're much more interested in exploring the extraordinary life of this ordinary guy. What plays out is something like a Woody Allen movie--if Woody made films about working class guys in Cleveland. Giamatti plays the character with a constant scowl, something like Woody's constant nervousness. He works in a monochromatic file room, lives in a dingy apartment, and shuffles along gray streets. Somehow, when set against the scowl, this saturation of grimness starts to seem hysterically funny.
