x359594
23rd September 2010, 17:29
Saw it last night.
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have made the best non-documentary feature about the Beat Generation so far. It's also perhaps the only major film I’ve ever seen that is, in both form and content, a close reading of the text. I have never seen a film based on a work of literature that even remotely approached Howl’s devotion to the words on paper. If you’re a writer, or care about poetry, you are almost certainly going to love this film. Howl was made for you, with intelligence and more than a little cinematic bravery, and it shows. Howl is a terrific movie.
James Franco is excellent as Allen Ginsberg and reads the poem exactly as Ginsberg did based on surviving recordings. Those portions of the poem that aren’t presented through animation are read aloud in court or at the Gallery Six event (the literary importance of which is never mentioned) or in snippets as we watch Ginsberg typing away in his San Francisco apartment. It’s in the animated moments in particular, an extension of Eric Drooker's work in Ginsberg's Illuminated Poems, that you realize that we’re not watching a conventional Hollywood movie, in spite of the presence of several major actors. These passages let you know that the filmmakers, indeed everyone connected to this project, have decided to be loyal to the poem, not to any cinematic conventions of contemporary American cinema. The structure of the film is the structure of the poem. Period.
My only caveat is the absence of Shigeyoshi Murao from the film. He was the clerk who was busted for selling the book to undercover cops and the only person who spent time in jail in connection with the case (Ferlinghetti turned himself in and was immediately released on his own recognizance.) Shig became co-owner of City Lights and Ginsberg used to stay at his apartment whenever he visited San Francisco from the 1970s until Shig's death in 1996.
Finally, I was touched by the tribute to Peter Orlovsky at the end; Orlovsky died in May of this year so I assume that Epstein and Friedman added this recently.
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have made the best non-documentary feature about the Beat Generation so far. It's also perhaps the only major film I’ve ever seen that is, in both form and content, a close reading of the text. I have never seen a film based on a work of literature that even remotely approached Howl’s devotion to the words on paper. If you’re a writer, or care about poetry, you are almost certainly going to love this film. Howl was made for you, with intelligence and more than a little cinematic bravery, and it shows. Howl is a terrific movie.
James Franco is excellent as Allen Ginsberg and reads the poem exactly as Ginsberg did based on surviving recordings. Those portions of the poem that aren’t presented through animation are read aloud in court or at the Gallery Six event (the literary importance of which is never mentioned) or in snippets as we watch Ginsberg typing away in his San Francisco apartment. It’s in the animated moments in particular, an extension of Eric Drooker's work in Ginsberg's Illuminated Poems, that you realize that we’re not watching a conventional Hollywood movie, in spite of the presence of several major actors. These passages let you know that the filmmakers, indeed everyone connected to this project, have decided to be loyal to the poem, not to any cinematic conventions of contemporary American cinema. The structure of the film is the structure of the poem. Period.
My only caveat is the absence of Shigeyoshi Murao from the film. He was the clerk who was busted for selling the book to undercover cops and the only person who spent time in jail in connection with the case (Ferlinghetti turned himself in and was immediately released on his own recognizance.) Shig became co-owner of City Lights and Ginsberg used to stay at his apartment whenever he visited San Francisco from the 1970s until Shig's death in 1996.
Finally, I was touched by the tribute to Peter Orlovsky at the end; Orlovsky died in May of this year so I assume that Epstein and Friedman added this recently.