Howl (2010) Reviews

• It's about the poem

  birck2011-07-22

  I'm surprised that this film worked as well as it did, and that it has been received as well as it has here. I read Howl about 5 years after Ginsberg wrote it, when I was in high school, and, like it or not, it became part of my thinking in the fifty years since then. Still in high school, I could quote passages from the poem at my friends, who would follow up with the next passage, etc. Boooring. But if you had told me that a film would be made about it, with a script constructed of trial transcripts and interviews in the public record, alternating with a recreation of Ginsberg's first public (paying-public; there was ONE previous reading of the full poem) reading of the poem, I wouldn't have expected much. And I would have been wrong. It's well-done and well-acted, and no excuses are made for anything about Ginsberg or his work. I was dismayed at first to see the poem interpreted into animation, but the filmmakers were savvy enough to produce the animation in the style of the times, i.e., 1955, when Disney's Fantasia was still the state of the art, and the animation in Howl could have come out of the Night on Bald Mountain section. In the end, it worked, I think, by keeping the viewer visually in the world of the poem itself, rather than in the biographical material about Ginsberg or the trial and the litigants. So if you want to watch a movie about a poem, and the poet and his friends, but mainly about the poem, this one does a pretty good job.

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• Mr. Ginsberg I love thee...

  ihrtfilms2010-06-08

  Watched in June 2010 I've never read Howl or really have had much interest in Allen Ginsberg, but having seen this delight of a film, things have changed. The film takes a look at several key moments in Ginsbergs life. In B&W we see Ginsberg recite his poem Howl: there are also insights into his friendships with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and his relationship with Peter Orlovsky. The reading of the poem is segmented throughout the film and in between these segments we see Ginsberg being interviewed, whilst we never see the interviewer, we do see Ginsberg talk about his life. The other main element is the trial of Howl, which was deemed obscene. All these aspects combine well and it never feels disjointed; they are nicely contrasted and offer great insights into the life of Ginsberg. Add to this some wonderful animation that plays during much of the recital of Howl; it creates something of a reality to the poem and made it even more stunning and graphic and tragic and beautiful. The trial scenes are fascinating with the constant questioning by the prosecution as to what certain lines or words meant. And how wonderful the judge, who seemed to have made his decision well before the trial was over. Thank goodness for him. James Franco plays Ginsberg and does so well, although he doesn't have too much to do, he is mostly either being interviewed or reciting; but it is in this he impresses, the passion, the intensity of the piece shines through: the ending of Howl, known as 'Footnote to Howl' is brilliantly spoken and I found it hugely emotional. The film has a slight doco feel to it at times, but it is otherwise an absorbing and wonderfully told account.

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• Poetry as a movie

  marika_alexandrou2010-09-20

  I was lucky to watch this movie at the Athens Film Festival last Saturday and, despite its occasional flaws, I loved it. Ginsberg is fairly known to Greece , though most people (myself included) got to know him through his connection with Dylan. In that sense, I wasn't familiar with HOWL or the obscenity trial. For me , the movie's main attraction is the fact that it is not a biopic but a study on the creation of poetry, the power and magic of the words, the creator's struggle for genuineness through a dark path of madness and sexual frustration. The film is an unusual blend of poetry recitation, psychedelic animation, a graphic dramatization of Ginsberg's interview and a straight-forward dramatization of the trial.Some of them work fine and some not. Franco catches the right spirit of a young poet striving to find his way of expression and he is magnetic both in the recitation and in the interview scenes.The trial scenes , though well acted, seemed a little flat to me as compared to the vibrant tone that the poem itself imposes to the film . The animation was a bit uneven , in cases great (the Moloch section was terrific) , in cases indifferent and sometimes, for me, annoying. Apart from those parts that didn't work for me to the extend that I expected , the film is a unique docudrama, a magnificent and courageous ode to the power of words and the freedom of speech and a great depiction of the personal struggle of an artist to be truthful to himself.

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• Howl

  razmatazern2010-06-21

  Howl was an interesting look into the life of Allen Ginsberg. The movie was mainly about the trial that questioned whether or not Ginsberg's poem, "Howl" was too obscene. However, there were brief bits where James Franco as Ginsberg was being interviewed about his personal life. I felt that the animations that were displayed during the reading of the poem made the poem more powerful and clear. The contrasts between the beautiful imagery of the poem and the scenes of the tense trial were great. The trial scenes were very powerful, and the actors that played the witnesses (namely Mary Louise-Parker and Jeff Daniels), did a really great job creating believable characters. I loved the film and Franco did a great job portraying Allen Ginsberg.

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• tears of the wind

  lucius_4202010-11-08

  I can honestly say that I watched this entire movie with a very critical literary and historical eye as well as from the standpoint of a filmologist. Even before I read all the other reviews and watched it I was plotting what to write in this review. As a work of art, "Howl" the movie, is a decent piece of film. It has many phrasings of words in the script that are a psychoanalyst's wet dream and help to create the setting of conflict within the self. The poem itself is simultaneously an observation of current affairs mixed with a critical self-analysis by the author as well as an outcry both against all the injustice and wrongs of the world and also a cry of delight for the wonderful pleasurable things that the world can provide, especially the discovery of identity which frees the wild side of our nature that is suppressed by the strict rules placed on a person by the society they are born into and that they are expected to conform to. I thought that James Franco was indeed a pretty boy, but that his voice lacked the experience and conviction to match the delivery of Allen Ginsberg's carefully measured and self-tormented voice. The animation was definitely not an amateur work, but I felt that it lacked the precise timing of the imagery to symbolize the words at the right moment to make the words really come to life. The animation that went with the powerful opening lines of the poem did not feel right at all and seemed a betrayal of the author's intent by not correctly portraying the symbolism invoked by the words. I felt that the animators were subdued to conform to the ideas of the producers and the censorship of the MPAA, which is truly ironic considering that the final segment of the trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a poignant statement against the censorship of writers and artists and makes a clear statement that the freedom to express ourself is absolutely necessary for a society of free peoples to exist. Many times over freedom of speech has been on trial and it always proves to be the key factor on freedom of thought. The music and camera work were done with expensive equipment and some attention to detail as most Hollywood films are which made the overall feel of the entire experience relatively pleasing. I feel I must add this segment to the review to explain why the success of this movie leaves such a sour taste in my mouth: A few years ago I stumbled upon a brilliant mind-blowing documentary called "The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg" and Jerry Aronson, who made that film, followed Ginsberg around for 25 years with a camera after his life was saved because a cop was about to beat his skull in at one of the free speech riots of the 1960s when everyone turned to hear Ginsberg "ohm"-ing into the police loudspeaker and then Jerry says that when he marketed the film to producers in the U.S. they all said that nobody wanted to make a movie about a poet and he had to seek money in Europe to make that film. According to IMDb, that movie was not sent to international film festivals, was only shown for one weekend at one U.S. theatre, and overall grossed less than $3000. A few years later this movie Howl is made and gets sent to all the big international film festivals and grosses over $300,000. This is a real tragedy both cinematically and intellectually and a major disaster for the literary filmologist world. I'm sure Aronson's checkbook is feeling pretty disappointed, although he got a small clip sold to this movie. I sincerely appreciate this film getting out there to make a few more people aware of how influential this poem and poet was to the "beat"/"hippie"/"counter-culture" "movement" in the U.S. during the 1960s, although the screenwriters tied it simply to a censorship trial and nothing more than a few people in a small room appreciating it when it first was read in public by the author. If you truly want some insight into Allen Ginsberg's life, get your local video store to order a copy (or netflix has it, if that option is available to you) of "The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg. The real truth of history is that Timothy Leary turned Allen Ginsberg onto psilocybin mushrooms, and Allen Ginsberg turned Bob Dylan and the Beatles onto LSD.

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