If you are a writer, you owe it to yourself to watch the movie, HOWL. There’s no way around it. Allen Ginsberg’s masterpiece was pivotal to differentiating the difference between art and obscenity. Without his pioneering work, the literary landscape would be made up of a lot of boring tripe.
This movie advertises itself as being about the famous obscenity trial HOWL underwent back in the day, but it’s really a portrait of Ginsberg. Do you remember when James Franco starred as James Dean a while ago? Do you remember the insanely awesome job he did? Well, he’s done it again, this time for Ginsberg. He looks EXACTLY like a young Ginsberg, and his performance is so spot-on, one has to wonder if he’s actually channeling Ginsberg’s ghost.
Franco’s not the only perfect imitation. Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman went out of their way to find the perfect actors for Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It’s hard to look at their performances and not wonder if you’re really watching a documentary.
In fact, this movie was based on court records, interviews and even the title poem itself. As Franco reads “Howl” to a coffee house audience, the poem is portrayed through a series of trippy animation sequences. Normally, this kind of thing is difficult to credibly pull off, but considering the subject matter, there is no other way to do it. Here, it works against the odds, and it’s a sheer joy to watch.
It pulls no punches, and neither does the rest of the movie. All too often, homosexuality is portrayed in film to shock its viewers, and while that impulse is clearly a part of the directors’ motivation, the scene where Ginsberg gets caught giving Cassady a blowjob is also honestly portrayed. And when the two are in bed together, Ginsberg’s shy nature and Cassidy’s tender encouragement is actually kind of beautiful.
But HOWL reaches its true awesomeness with the trial scenes. With MAD MEN’s Jon Hamm as the defense lawyer and David Strathairn as the prosecuting attorney, things get interesting very quickly. They play off of each other so perfectly it’s easy to get lost in their scenes. They get even better when they’re cross examining each others “expert” witnesses. Treat Williams, who can be pretty forgettable in many of his roles, shines here with his humble understanding of Ginsberg’s work. The best, however, is when Hamm absolutely destroys Jeff Daniels on the stand. Daniels plays a character who thinks he knows everything about art and is very dismissive of “Howl.” To watch Hamm take him apart is the highlight of this movie. The only weak link here is Mary-Louise Parker, who plays a prim and proper critic of “Howl.” Her screen time is so brief her talents seem wasted here.
On a side note, Carter Burwell does the score. It’s always good to see he’s still getting work, even though the Coen brothers seem to have stopped using him for their movies. He captures Ginsberg’s shy sadness perfectly, but that’s no surprise to anyone who has seen BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.
Early in the film, Ginsberg talks about how he never expected “Howl” to be published. If he had, then he would have been a lot cleaner. After all, he didn’t want to offend his father’s sensibilities; he wanted the old man to be proud of him. As a result of thinking he would slip under the radar, he was free to write about whatever he wanted to. To write about how things really were. To write the way people really talked when they were among friends.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is why Ginsberg was so important. We have a lot of freedom in the way we write these days. We can publish all of George Carlin’s Seven Words, we can publish scatological humor and we can publish sex scenes. All of these things are worthy artistic pursuits, and they are things we couldn’t do in, say, 1931.
Thank you, Allen Ginsberg, for helping us reach this freedom. And thank you, Epstein and Friedman, for portraying this struggle so well.
HOWL
Written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
Produced by Oscilloscope
84 minutes
$14.99
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