My private Cleveland

Leanna 2022-02-14 08:01:24

Some movies are public, and some are extremely private. The former are all kinds of movies that arouse thoughts and controversies. The three fools make Hollywood, White Ribbon, Hole, National Enemy, Goodbye Lenin, etc. They are not necessarily blockbuster movies, nor do they necessarily involve public events, but they always make people think in a grand narrative. The same theme. The boundaries of private films may not be as clear as public films, but there are always some films that have a kind of family resemblance that Wittgenstein said. Even blockbusters and commercial films make you feel that they are telling you. A part of life, and this part of life is hard to resonate with other audiences. For me, "Xiao Wu" is such a movie, "Blue" is, and so is this American glory.

The whole film was shot in Cleveland, and the shooting time was set in winter. There is no sunny scene here, it's all Cleveland brown brick walls, gray sky, and standing factory buildings. The downtown skyline that occasionally flashes by is also dominated by dark colors, and there are people who work day after day under the tall buildings.

There are also those streets. Although the street scenes of watching movies cannot be named, I feel that every place has a collection of familiar senses. The small broken house where Harvey first lived seemed to be the community near E70, with wide streets, especially in winter. The distance between roadside houses is not very wide, with trees and shrubs dotted between them. After Harvey got divorced, he was walking on the sidewalk with two rows of cedar trees, behind the foggy car lights, driving on Mayfield Road. Michelle told me that this Mayfiled was leading to Pennsylvania a long time ago when he just fell. Maybe it's not Mayfield, but Chester Avenue. What's the difference? Perhaps Harvey met Quinn’s dessert shop, a window in an alley in Little Italy, where I passed countless times.

This is Cleveland, a declining industrial city, full of withered blocks, empty roads with dead leaves in winter, seemingly ordinary, we have different stories. When Harvey was abandoned by his ex-wife and couldn't write his works, he seemed to be guarded by the angels of the city, and his life continued. Some people say that this is a movie with no big plot and ups and downs, yes, but each of us is an immortal soul. There is no plot more turbulent than your personal memories and cities, whether it's Cleveland, Beijing, Dubai, or Yili.

View more about American Splendor reviews

Extended Reading
  • Cathryn 2022-04-24 07:01:15

    The expression of comics has only two functions: biographical films are used to shape the comic family design; a little more visual experience of different materials makes the plain plot more interesting. Compared with the same form of "Ninja Baby", Only at the beginning of the scene where Harvey decided to draw comics, the comics showed his true emotions before the movie, and the others just confirmed how he created comics based on materials from life. After watching it, I wondered why it was called "American Glory" and how Harvey was dubbed the incarnation of the American Dream, because it is different from superhero, sloppy, lonely, cowardly, stubborn, and lives like thousands of ordinary people. Although there have been ups and downs, Being teased and insulted, always living for survival but having your own small persistence and small pursuit? In addition, Harvey himself was interviewed, the actor who played Harvey came off the set, and they reconstituted another layer of the shooting scene. This three-layer space stacking is interesting, and the other is Harvey himself explaining the moment Recognize the audience's play, the actors' acting skills, and the structure of the chapters are just the right burdens and knots like comics.

  • Bryana 2022-02-14 08:01:24

    As a gloomy and melancholic realist author's autobiographical film, in the end it was so positively healed, and it was a bit out of harmony. However, there is always some romantic poetry in it to extract a reason to live through creation.

American Splendor quotes

  • Robert Crumb: You turned yourself into a comic hero?

    Harvey Pekar: Sorta, yeah. But no idealized shit. No phony bullshit. The real thing, y'know? Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.

  • Joyce Brabner: Why does everything in my life have to be such a complicated disaster?