In one of the movie's most breathtakingly weird moments -- and one that's so difficult to pull off, I'm still amazed the filmmakers managed it -- the camera pulls back from a scene between Giamatti and Friedlander, as Pekar and Radloff, to show us the parameters of the movie set, widening our view until we see the real Pekar and Radloff huddled over a tray of gourmet jellybeans at one of the craft-services tables. Their discussion of the beans' relative merits segues into a casual discussion of the various ways of dealing with loneliness. Giamatti and Friedlander have retreated to folding chairs in the background, but we see them watching and listening to the real-life people they've been playing. The fourth wall has been broken down not just for us but for the actors, and it's revelatory for us to see just how amazed they are to be in the presence of the very people they've channeled so much energy into portraying.

"American Splendor" must have been a field day for these actors; they're all wonderful. James Urbaniak plays Robert Crumb with just the right amount of crackpot insouciance. Judah Friedlander shows us the humor in Radloff's precisely ordered way of looking at the world, without making jokes at his expense -- we understand immediately why Pekar likes him so much, even though many people might find him annoying.

Hope Davis hits all the right notes in playing Brabner, capturing perfectly her exasperated love for Pekar: Her devotion to him is bound up with restless impatience, but it's no less deep and genuine for that. (And when you see the real-life Joyce Brabner, with her deadpan-imp demeanor and her acorn-pointed chin, you realize just how perfectly cast Davis is.)

And Giamatti is the most perfect Pekar you could imagine -- other than, of course, the real Pekar himself. The movie world is full of terrific character actors who never get a lead role, simply because they're rarely the right "type" for a lead. Thank God this one came along for Giamatti: He carries a bit of Pekar's soul inside him, capturing the slouchy grace of his eternally dejected walk, and understanding intuitively the expressiveness of Pekar's eternal scowl.

The real-life Pekar, as we see him here, is grizzled and graying and constantly grousing; his voice modulates somewhere between a growl and a strangled whine. But instead of making Pekar seem like a crotchety old man (he's now in his 60s), that griping lends him an air of youthfulness, or at least agelessness -- he hasn't grown out of his constant complaining, he's simply grown into it. Giamatti, a young man playing a preternaturally old one, shows us that Pekar's constant groaning about life and its unfairness is actually a kind of vitality. The world of Harvey Pekar and of "American Splendor" is a weirdly hopeful one. It's a quintessentially American world with dashes of Greek tragedy, French existentialism, Italian neo-realism and Russian poetry tossed in. Pekar has every right to complain, and, God willing, he'll continue to do so. Life has a way of pushing at you from all directions. Once you stop pushing back against it, then you know you're really a goner.

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