I saw the best minds of my generation make a good film portraying the persecution of "Howl" in Fifties' courtrooms.
With a semi-documentary feel, "Howl" is light on Ginsberg, heavy on exploring the struggle between what 'Straights' consider obscene and what 'Beats' call literature. The result is reductive: the question boiled down to a few courtroom scenes, sans Ginsberg (the Publisher is on trial), where experts parry and thrust with Prosecutor and Defense Attorney. (The peeling of the pseudo-intellectual Professor David Kirk - Jeff Daniels - is masterful.) Like the poem, the courtroom debate is existential. As is the animation device used over Franco's lively intonation of the text. I found the device tedious and mostly irrelevant. A doomed attempt to visualize the unfilmable.
If you're dragging yourself through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, read the poem. The poem is meant to be a solitary, visceral experience, not a cartoon. If you want to know more about Ginsberg, read Ginsberg.
If you're too young to know "Howl" or the controversy, step up. The struggle for the freedom to express oneself openly did not begin with the "Howl" controversy, but it was a bellwether propelling America into the liberated Sixties.
A good watch, interesting but an acquired taste most likely palatable by few.
With a semi-documentary feel, "Howl" is light on Ginsberg, heavy on exploring the struggle between what 'Straights' consider obscene and what 'Beats' call literature. The result is reductive: the question boiled down to a few courtroom scenes, sans Ginsberg (the Publisher is on trial), where experts parry and thrust with Prosecutor and Defense Attorney. (The peeling of the pseudo-intellectual Professor David Kirk - Jeff Daniels - is masterful.) Like the poem, the courtroom debate is existential. As is the animation device used over Franco's lively intonation of the text. I found the device tedious and mostly irrelevant. A doomed attempt to visualize the unfilmable.
If you're dragging yourself through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, read the poem. The poem is meant to be a solitary, visceral experience, not a cartoon. If you want to know more about Ginsberg, read Ginsberg.
If you're too young to know "Howl" or the controversy, step up. The struggle for the freedom to express oneself openly did not begin with the "Howl" controversy, but it was a bellwether propelling America into the liberated Sixties.
A good watch, interesting but an acquired taste most likely palatable by few.