What a wonderful and enchanting surprise this film is, and it’s definitely going to be in my top five of 2004. I was beginning to wonder if I was actually going to be able to find that many. (Next month’s column will list those five movies — and I promise you that our list is going to be very different from those other Best of 2003 you’ve been seeing!)

American Splendor traces the true-life story of Harvey Pekar who became an underground comic book hero in the 1980s. The comic books are very appropriately called “American Splendor” and they detail Harvey’s every day life — working as a file clerk in a Cleveland Hospital and generally feeling like the world was created to personally torment him. You think Larry David is a curmudgeon in Curb Your Enthusiasm? Wait till you see Harvey!

Harvey is played by the brilliant character actor Paul Giamatti, and he is touching, relatable, gloriously grumpy, and utterly hilarious. His wife Joyce is played with great humor and idiosyncratic glamour by the brilliant Hope Davis, and both actors should receive (and are receiving) serious Academy Award considerations for their performances.

The film chronicles the life of a guy who begins life as an out-of-sorts kid and somewhat clings to his emotional version of the colic for the rest of his life. Harvey expects disaster at every turn and never truly grasps the meaning of good things even when they happen. Late in the film, Harvey has a close encounter with cancer (which is cured) and Joyce tells him that he has to be positive about his treatments. The anguish of being positive is so intense for Harvey that he literally cries out that he just can’t be that! He also can’t imagine having a child — but, in one of the most touching aspects of the film, he learns fate has a surprise for him there as well. There’s a wonderful message in all this, too — even though Harvey acts like the world’s reigning pessimist, he is in actuality a truly romantic and hopeful man who just feels like he can’t show that side to the world. Bring to mind any people you might know?

Now, I know you might be asking, “What’s fun about that?” The answer is that Harvey and all the people around him are so eminently lovable, relatable, and down-to-earth that you just bask in their presence for 100 minutes; moreover, the film has a brilliantly conceived and executed device that uses the real Harvey and Joyce Pekar as observers of and commentators on the film itself! We see several dramatic scenes, and then Harvey and Joyce appear and we hear their take on what is transpiring. For instance, Harvey became a semi-regular on David Letterman’s show for a brief time and the real footage of those interviews is used in the film, intercut with Giamatti’s performance before and after the interviews. In another scene, the real Harvey describes himself as just a “doom and gloom guy,” whereupon Joyce tells us that she actually believed she was marrying a guy with a sense of humor! The device is brilliant and innovative and makes for an altogether unique and engrossing experience.

The film has innumerable other touching and wonderful aspects, such as the glorification of the film Revenge of the Nerds as an inspirational message!

The title of the film and comic books themselves is a wonderful commentary on the journey into the everyday Cleveland life of its protagonists. These characters are people we meet all the time in our lives and, for me, are much representative of the heart of America. Hard-working people who long for their place in the sun and for someone whom they can love and who will love them ... survivors of countless encounters with the ordinary ups and downs of every day life, optimists who strive every day to keep that optimism alive in the face of disappointment, even heartbreak. I heartily and wholeheartedly recommend American Splendor as a fascinating and original film in a time where this kind of innovation is rare and, when it does appear, is usually translated from a dark perspective. I really believe that many of you will love the film, and I can’t wait to see it again.

MovieMystic Chakra Rating for American Splendor. (For an explanation of The Chakra Rating System, please visit www.Movingmessagesmedia.com.)

Chakra: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Rating: 5 4 4 4 5 4 5