If it weren't for James Franco's winning involvement, this biopic would be less of a howl and more of a whimper. The film is a combination of three strands: the 1957 obscenity trail for publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights bookshop; a candid interview with the poet himself; and Franco/Ginsberg's reading of the poem.
This last strand is sometimes accompanied by pseudo-mystical animation, at others by a modishly monochromatic reconstruction of Ginsberg's original Six Gallery reading. This took place, coincidentally, in San Francisco two years before the trail.
As for the animation – it doesn't work. Poetry is never best served on film by being decorated visually (despite Ginsberg's own involvement with the illustrations). We end up watching an urban fantasia of mawkish 'beat' spirituality, sentimentalised poverty, and psychedelic sex.
When Daniels tells the courtroom that poetry is poetry because you can't translate it into prose, we might add that it hardly lends itself to cartoons either. It's a lesson Julie Taymor might have learned before giving us her CGI-fest 'Tempest'.
Casting John Hamm, America's four-square straight guy, in the role of Jake Ehrlich, Felinghetti's defence lawyer, leaves us in no doubt as to which way the verdict will blow. The presence of Bob Balaban as the judge, Marie-Louise Parker in a cameo, and Jeff Daniels as a priggish professor also give this slight film a somewhat over-produced sheen. Was it only due to these big hitters' involvement that the film got made?
Howl the film is not an appraisal of the 'Beat Generation' in all its wonderful squalor and, frankly, un-selfconscious mediocrity. For that, you'd be better off reading James Campbell's wonderful 'This is the Beat Generation'. Campbell is superb on the more marginal figures of that loose group – the likes of Herbert Huncke, Burroughs, and the fascinating 'fallen angel of the beat generation', Lucien Carr. I longed for more of the Beats in the film.
The two figures that haunt 'Howl' the poem, however, are its dedicatee, Carl Soloman, who Ginsberg got to know in a mental institution, and another psychiatric patient – his mother. It's that relationship, which Ginsberg found too painful to talk about, that I wanted more detail of. In its narrow concentration on Howl the poem, Howl the film tantalisingly narrows its scope.
When Ginsberg tells us "there's no such thing as the Beat Generation. Just a bunch of guys trying to get published" we might remember that it was Allen himself who was the most ambitious of those guys. It was he who personally invited important poets and publishers to the Six Gallery reading, including Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure. Howl was second to last on the bill, and the not-yet 30 year old poet knew this was his chance.
In response to Ginsberg's reading, McClure wrote: "Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America..." Allen couldn't have planned it better.
What, half a century later, would Ginsberg have made of James Franco playing himself? I can't help thinking he'd sooner have Franco playing with himself. Franco is a latter-day picture of the angel-headed hipster Ginsberg eulogised and adored. Somewhere, up there, the old mystic must be smiling.
This last strand is sometimes accompanied by pseudo-mystical animation, at others by a modishly monochromatic reconstruction of Ginsberg's original Six Gallery reading. This took place, coincidentally, in San Francisco two years before the trail.
As for the animation – it doesn't work. Poetry is never best served on film by being decorated visually (despite Ginsberg's own involvement with the illustrations). We end up watching an urban fantasia of mawkish 'beat' spirituality, sentimentalised poverty, and psychedelic sex.
When Daniels tells the courtroom that poetry is poetry because you can't translate it into prose, we might add that it hardly lends itself to cartoons either. It's a lesson Julie Taymor might have learned before giving us her CGI-fest 'Tempest'.
Casting John Hamm, America's four-square straight guy, in the role of Jake Ehrlich, Felinghetti's defence lawyer, leaves us in no doubt as to which way the verdict will blow. The presence of Bob Balaban as the judge, Marie-Louise Parker in a cameo, and Jeff Daniels as a priggish professor also give this slight film a somewhat over-produced sheen. Was it only due to these big hitters' involvement that the film got made?
Howl the film is not an appraisal of the 'Beat Generation' in all its wonderful squalor and, frankly, un-selfconscious mediocrity. For that, you'd be better off reading James Campbell's wonderful 'This is the Beat Generation'. Campbell is superb on the more marginal figures of that loose group – the likes of Herbert Huncke, Burroughs, and the fascinating 'fallen angel of the beat generation', Lucien Carr. I longed for more of the Beats in the film.
The two figures that haunt 'Howl' the poem, however, are its dedicatee, Carl Soloman, who Ginsberg got to know in a mental institution, and another psychiatric patient – his mother. It's that relationship, which Ginsberg found too painful to talk about, that I wanted more detail of. In its narrow concentration on Howl the poem, Howl the film tantalisingly narrows its scope.
When Ginsberg tells us "there's no such thing as the Beat Generation. Just a bunch of guys trying to get published" we might remember that it was Allen himself who was the most ambitious of those guys. It was he who personally invited important poets and publishers to the Six Gallery reading, including Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure. Howl was second to last on the bill, and the not-yet 30 year old poet knew this was his chance.
In response to Ginsberg's reading, McClure wrote: "Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America..." Allen couldn't have planned it better.
What, half a century later, would Ginsberg have made of James Franco playing himself? I can't help thinking he'd sooner have Franco playing with himself. Franco is a latter-day picture of the angel-headed hipster Ginsberg eulogised and adored. Somewhere, up there, the old mystic must be smiling.