I’ll try to make this short. This is mostly so I can remember what to bring up when someone asks me about this.

The movie uses a few story lines to help narrate and understand Howl and to help develop Allen Ginsberg’s character. I’m just going to throw this out here— if you haven’t read Howl you’ve really no business watching this movie. I’ll admit it’s a pretentious statement, but had the movie been created assuming the audience has read and understood the poem it would have been a lot better. Instead, they cram four different elements, doing a mediocre job on each.

They are as follows:

Animation Version of Howl
God-awful. So awful I could have vomited. No, not in a cool punk rock way. The animators merged hand-painted backdrops (by Eric Drooker) with their shitty CGI characters to create a LITERAL interpretation of the novel. Insert facepalm. We all understand the sexual euphemisms Ginsberg uses, and we don’t need to be reminded by playing that tacky CGI animation of two people having sex over and over. The movie strives to instill the idea that Howl wasn’t so literal and foul, but rather a liberal way of displaying feelings of society through experience. All for naught—they really lose all credit by throwing in this element. Additionally, the art gave a twenty-first century feel while the rest of the movie mimicked (or tried to) the time period, leaving the transitions between other elements and animation very flawed.

Obscenity Trial
This is another part I could’ve lived without. It is based on the trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Bookstore) who was charged with obscenity for publishing Howl. this element is used to show the controversy behind Howl and to prove its literary merit. Look, you don’t need to prove to the audience that Howl has literary merit; we all read the synopsis (with the exception of the fifteen year olds behind me who got as far as “James Franco”)— It’s a piece that has been celebrated for over 60 years yadda yadda. It was really drawn on and lackluster. There’s no heated moment in the trial. You know how in some movies the lawyer stands up—ready to give a concluding statement. AND WHAM BAM POW they hit you, and the judge, and the opposing side HARD. Suddenly everyone gets it! O the epiphany! No.

Interview
Another fourth of the movie is a faux interview based on real interviews of Ginsberg. James Franco is not another pretty face. He is a great, alternative actor and this movie wouldn’t be if not for him. You really get his quirkiness, his personality, and his dorky yet cool-as-fuck demeanor. Ultimately, I would’ve left this part to narrate the progression of Howl and then slashed out the last two elements.

Reenactments
What the audience really missed out on was some character development. By leaving only a few moments for reenactments, the movie loses the passion behind Howl. For instance, the mentioning of Kerouac, Cassady, Orlovsky, and Soloman are so brief, that the chemistry between them goes almost unnoticed. That’s a shame when you consider  his best experiences are with them. Before the credits roll, they give epilogue notes about these characters they had refused to develop in the first place. If the audience hasn’t been given an opportunity to even acknowledge their presence, how can they possibly care about their whereabouts. Additionally, ideas go on without elaboration. For instance, Ginsberg wrote one part of Howl while on peyote. While wandering the streets he mistakes a building for a terrible monster and the movie touches upon this. In his poem, he acknowledges this monster and implies that those mentioned in part one of the novel have given themselves to this monster. In this section he repeats “moloch!” which is a reference to a monster in another novel (Metropolis), which Ginsberg credits. He uses “moloch” to illustrate the demon. None of this was explained, making it seem like Ginsberg childishly came up with some sing-songy lyric.

Other notes:

• Music sucked. Would’ve been better with the absence of music.
• Franco’s reading of Howl - Phenomenal.
• I’m no film major or film junkie—so I’m asking how one describes a movie that wasn’t shot so great. You know, the 50s aesthetic was there—but not fully there. And the black and white was a good idea—but not executed well enough. Poor cinematography?