T. and I checked out the Atlantic Film Festival on Friday night, only managing to make it to one show during the whole week plus of festival. We may have only been here for a month, but seriously... We should have tried a little harder. If this film was a testament to the excellent, high-calibre films being featured over the last week, then we really missed out.
This film, which was equal parts obscenity trial, staged interview, poetry reading and computer generated artistic rendering, was a fun and interesting way to connect to Allen Ginsberg and his poetry. While I would argue that some of these sequences were better than others, I liked the pastiche approach and the various interpretations it allowed the poem to operate within simultaneously.
Each of the four parts was shot in a different way, and from a cinematic perspective, I must say I was most drawn to the "documentary style" of the interview with Ginsberg. James Franco managed to support an entire movie where he was the only central, consistent figure. Pretty bad ass, if you ask me. I completely bought that Allen Ginsberg was griping to a journalist in the wake of the obscenity trial he was not a part of.
While I liked the poetry reading sections in black and white, the audience reactions seemed really forced. Would this have been shocking? Ho-hum? Something in between. The clapping and laughter occasionally made me think more of a comedy club then a poetry reading. I felt like the audience of hipsters was titillated, but not truly engaged. Maybe I am just reading too much into it.
In the court room, which was filmed just like any court-type drama, we have very eloquent lawyers giving speeches and attempting to answer bizarre questions. What makes a piece of work literature? What is artistic merit, and how do we determine it? Questions for all the ages, to be sure. I thought the feel-good style of pitting the "bad lawyer" with the prudish witnesses against the "likeable, cares about literature lawyer" with the deep, more thought provoking witnesses almost seemed too extreme. That said, if the reactions really were that polarized, it makes sense. That is the nature of a court case, I would assume.
Also, for the record, I bet those beautiful speeches weren't just from the heart. I bet they had copious notes, if not a full speech for their final statement. Seriously. You can't just pull that kind of thing out of the air.
The visualizations were very interesting, tumbling and bizarre. I found it of note, in a film that frankly deals with issues of "deviant" notions of sexuality for the time period, that the majority of the sexuality being portrayed was so vanilla. Homosexuality was dealt with frankly by parts of the film, but shirked it in other moments, which I thought kind of muddled the message.
For example, here are two photos of Allen with his partner... Only one of these moments is recreated in the film. I bet you can guess which one.
I thought they could have pushed the envelope even further. But then, the visualizations were entirely interpretive, so really, they could have been whatever the CG guys wanted them to be. One thing I know for certain: the flaccid penises were of a generous size.
I liked that the images were constantly in motion, moving and changing shape and scope as the poem was being read. I didn't always know what to do with what I saw, but that didn't invalidate it for me in any way.
Why does an animal howl? Is it an expression of pain or triumph? In titling his poem Howl, I think the answer needs to be somewhere in between. And that's kind of what I thought about this movie. It wasn't universally celebratory, but I'm glad I saw it.
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