Review of Howl (2010) by Spencer S — 14 May 2013

This is definitely on the side of experimental, when it comes to former documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman ("The Trail of Harvey Milk"). They have historically told the stories of gay icons and the reality of their lives in comparison to media interpretations, but there wasn't much that was learned from this film.

Though it was not a documentary it for sure was not a bio-pic either. The film brings together three different themes and elements to Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's life: a reading at the Six Gallery in 1955 where Ginsberg read his work "Howl" in three parts, an animated sequence that follows the events of the poem and expresses the real life emotions of the author (based on animation Ginsberg actually did), and an obscenity trial against the first publisher of Ginsberg's poem in 1957.

There are also interspersed interview-like sections of the film where Ginsberg (Franco) speaks on his life and then there are filmed sections that show his troubles. Most prevalent is his affair with Jack Kerouac, his admiration for Neal Cassady, his friendship with Carl Solomon, and his life as a homosexual with his life partner Peter Orlovsky.

These snippets of information are most often lost to the audience as the narrative becomes garbled between the actual interviews and the disconnected style of Ginsberg's poetry which flits in and out of the rest of the film.

The animation, I will say, works well with Franco's reading of Ginsberg's work, which works well in contrast with the courtroom scenes. In those scenes two lawyers keep bringing literary critics, English professors and writers to the stand to analyze the merit of Ginsberg's work and the necessity of the curse and slang words that he uses time and again to emphasize his travels and the lives of those in the Beat generation.

The film doesn't do much except show the merits and cultural significance of the actual poem and doesn't relay much about Ginsberg's actual life, which leaves you a bit wanting when there's so much controversy accumulated around this trial going on.

If Ginsberg was more in the foreground of the narrative, this film would make more sense, since its subject matter is so surreal, and make the trial mean more by the very end. As an analysis of the poem for an English class, sure, this film makes its point convincingly, but did it have to argue that in this day and age?