Rob Epstein and Jeffery Friedman’s newest film, Howl, explores Allen Ginsberg’s poem of the same name. The movie examines Ginsberg’s collection of poetry from Howl and Other Poems through multiple perspectives and lens, yet lacks a firm story arc.
Howl bounces between scenes with little explanation or introduction. It delves right into one of the most discussed and controversial poems of the twentieth century with no hesitations.
A wise, wholly introspective 1957 Ginsberg, played by James Franco, narrates the film in the form of interviews conducted by an unseen journalist in Ginsberg’s living room.
Franco plays this older Ginsberg quite adeptly. His voice mimics the Ginsberg that has been captured in audio recordings and is accessible to almost anyone. Franco is honest and convincing.
The interviews are frank, his timing is exquisite, and he is completely sympathetic. Donning a plaid shirt, black thick-rimmed glasses, and a fake beard, Franco almost even looks like Ginsberg.
Of course the greater disparity comes when Franco plays the younger Ginsberg. Clean shaven and wide eyed, falling in love with Neal Cassady, and struggling with his sexuality, Franco looks more like James Franco. He lacks Ginsberg’s disheveled-ness. Epstein and Friedman recreate photographs of the Beat generation, but still Franco’s pristine can’t quite live up to it.
A range of mediums is used within the film, each coming one after another relentlessly. The subdued interviews have been mentioned, and this is where the most real emotion is drawn from within the film.
Old film footage of the Beats is woven in, a grounding of reality in the recreation of Ginsberg’s life and poem. Epstein and Friedman use black and white film to shoot the scenes of Ginsberg at Columbia, befriending Jack Kerouac, and road tripping with Cassady – these are his naïve times, his education, his development as a poet.
Highly stylized footage of the obscenity trial that Ginsberg’s work faced is the most accessible and familiar to contemporary audiences. And then there is animation.
Much of the dialogue in the film is Howl, mostly Franco reciting Howl. This deliverance is illustrated by colorful, explicit animations. Skeletal bodies fly through the air above cityscapes, they shoot up heroin, they walk against the status quo. Men and women, women and women, men and men copulate. The animations are littered with phalluses and seem to show the viewer what the poem is about.
This is extremely unnerving to anyone who has read Howl because such literature should not have its meaning projected onto anyone. Even a scholar who defends Ginsberg’s work during the trial scene says, there is no way of knowing exactly what the poem means or is trying to say. These animations seem to be a clear way to make the film’s content more accessible to a general audience. But reading, or hearing, poetry is individual in its nature. It would have been more successful to have the screen go black and just hear Franco recite the poem as he does so well.
In the film, Ginsberg talks about his falling in love with poetry, his fear about his words and being published, his time in a mental institution, and signing the papers for his mother’s lobotomy. But very little is shown about what drove him to write Howl. Where did this powerful, explosive poem come from? It seems that it just materialized from some of his experiences (which are quickly mentioned then forgotten) and written in one sitting.
The film is made up of snapshots from a short period of time in Ginsberg’s life. Things are alluded to (his father was a poet, his mother was crazy, he had his heart broken by Cassady, and he eventually found his true love, Peter Orlovsky), but the audience never gets to understand the comprehensive story of who Allen Ginsberg was. Yet, the movie is called Howl, so it seems understandable that it sticks to its subject. Rather it just leaves the viewer yearning to know more about this genius of a man.
The only complete story within the film is the trial. Here enters a myriad of familiar faces. Jon Hamm plays Ginsberg’s publisher’s defender, David Strathairn plays the prosecutor, Bob Balaban plays the judge, and Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, and Treat Williams are all witnesses. The trial is cut to throughout the movie, but remains coherent. Strathairn’s character looks as though he’s lost the trial before it’s even over. And Hamm plays defender with all the grace and authority of Don Draper, proving beyond a doubt that Howl has social importance.
The film is choppy. The animations are frustrating and obvious. And the story isn’t completely thorough. Yet Ginsberg’s words and Franco’s sincerity forces the audience to ask how such past writings have impacted the country and society — and if there will be more that will do the same.
