Starring: James Franco, Jon Hamm, David Strathairn and Mary-Louise Parker.
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 84 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
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Written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Celluloid Closet), Howl is a dramatised documentary of the life and times of Alan Ginsberg, a central figure of the San Francisco-based Beat generation of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Beats turned their backs on conventional society, and above all valued the search for self through writing and music. Ginsberg wrote Howl as a performance piece in 1955, in rebellion against conformity and in sympathy with lonely outcasts, poets, political activists, homosexuals and others, who think and respond to life differently. In doing so, Ginsberg rewrote the rule book on poetry, and gave powerful voice to ideas and feelings by tearing down conventional poetic norms and structures.
Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems was published by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti through his book shop City Light Books in 1956. Ferlinghetti was charged with disseminating obscene literature in 1957, and the trial that followed, which ruled that Ginsberg’s poem was not obscene, helped change the definition of what constitutes poetry, paving the way for such musical giants as the poetic balladeers Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
In Howl the biopic, Epstein and Friedman step outside the frame of conventional filmmaking and through a multilayered, non-linear approach using a variety of cinematic techniques (black and white and colour photography, animation and archival footage), explain not only the origins of Ginsberg’s poetry and the cultural importance of the trial, but also the way poetry is different to prose.
In one powerful scene from the trial, Ginsberg’s defence lawyer Jake Ehrlich (played by Mad Men’s Jon Hamm) interrogates a prominent university professor (played by Jeff Daniels), and asks him to explain what is wrong with Ginsberg’s poetry. The professor replies that it follows none of the ‘rules’ of poetry and cannot be translated into prose, to which Ehrlich counters that it is precisely this inability to translate poetry into prose that makes it poetry.
To illustrate this point, the filmmakers use animation extensively and to great effect. James Franco (127 Hours) plays Ginsberg with conviction and intensity, and at intervals throughout the film, against the aural backdrop of Ginsberg/Franco reading Howl at its premier in 1955, the screen changes suddenly from black and white or colour into an explosion of hallucinogenic colours and shapes (many of them morphing phalluses), which drives the intensity of his language and gives meaning to his vision.
Howl is not for everyone. But for those sympathetic and grateful to the generation of Beats who changed the way we write and think, this film is both a guide to understanding poetry and a walk down memory lane.
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