Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch American Splendor
2003 · Robert Pulcini · American Splendor on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how Giamatti stoops and mutters through every complaint. (performance)
Giamatti plays Pekar's grievance as posture more than dialogue: shoulders down, voice flat, complaint constant. Hope Davis matches him with the same deadpan precision as Joyce.
Payoff: The stoop is the whole social position in one shape, dissatisfaction you can see before anyone explains it. In the reading: the-gest. Deleuze calls a posture that exposes a life's condition the gest: Giamatti's stoop shows you Pekar's world without a line of dialogue.
Notice how a scene hands off to the real Harvey talking. (cutting)
Berman and Pulcini cut from Giamatti's staged Harvey to the actual Pekar narrating, second-guessing, or to a drawn panel of the same moment, again and again.
Payoff: Each jump is a leap, not a match, so you keep meeting a new version of one man. In the reading: interstice / the 'AND'. Deleuze calls this the irrational cut: the join carries the weight, not the continuity between the two images.
Notice the bare room where the real Harvey sits and talks. (staging)
No set dressing, just a chair and a microphone. The film returns here between dramatized scenes to let the actual man comment on the actor playing him.
Payoff: The real man and his performed double share the same space, so neither version fully wins. In the reading: hyalosign. Deleuze's crystal image is a moment when the actual and its double can't be told apart; here that mirror is casting, not glass.
Listen for the real Pekar's voice narrating over Giamatti's scenes. (sound)
His actual gravel voice comments on and second-guesses the dramatized action, so what you hear and what you see are never quite telling the same story.
Payoff: The narration is a second Harvey, arguing out loud with the one you're watching.
Watch for panel borders and thought balloons drawn onto the picture. (setting)
The film periodically overlays comic-book apparatus, captions, borders, balloons, directly onto the photographed image, mixing hand-drawn panels with live action and archival footage.
Payoff: The movie keeps admitting it is assembled from different kinds of pictures, not just one.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the seams where dramatized Harvey hands off to the real one. That gap is where the film's warmth lives.