The Last Movie I Saw

Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is a weird hybrid of a movie, which actually seems entirely appropriate to its subject. Unfortunately, it falls a bit short of generating the kind of excitement the presentation seems designed to elicit. I'm inclined to think that the filmmakers wanted to create something truly poetic, to match the accomplishment of Allen Ginsberg with his masterpiece, the poem that gives this movie its title. And much of what's on-screen really does suggest the visceral impact of that poem, through a re-creation of the famed reading by Ginsberg in San Francisco back in 1955, and animated sequences that do a fair job of approximating the dream-like imagery Ginsberg's words call forth. Even the segments of Ginsberg being interviewed, inter-cut with the other material, work to emphasize the personal vision from which the poem was born. But there's a fourth component that, while on its own terms is pretty compelling too, kind of upsets the overall balance. That part, comprised of testimony offered in the obscenity trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Howl's publisher), creates a narrative anchor that doesn't quite gibe with the rest of the film, kind of reeling it in as a concession to literal clarity that operates almost at cross purposes with the rest of the piece. This is hardly a fatal flaw-- I imagine it may have been necessary to secure either funding or distribution-- but it does inhibit what might've been a truly transcendent piece of avant-garde art (if not quite to the level of the poem itself). It's still well worth seeing, for the reasons mentioned plus the fine performance of James Franco as Ginsberg, and the job he does especially in channeling the poet's measured emotion in the reading of Howl. The trial scenes too include a number of excellent acting turns, by Jeff Daniels, David Strathairn, Bob Balaban and others. I kind of wish this had been split into two movies-- the material is certainly rich enough to justify that.