T's Take on HOWL

Allen Ginsberg was a genius and an a source of great personal inspiration. I'm sensing a short review here, but I'll try to leave myself uncolored by devotion.

James Franco was an at least effective choice for Ginsberg, but within his first few appearances on screen I was seeing the Actor instead of Ginsberg himself. There are few performances indeed where I feel an actor has overprepared, but the timing and pauses were so carefully rehearsed I could hear the clicking and whirring of his mechanical process. I think Mr. Franco's shortcoming is a result of total comprehension as to what it was he was trying to recreate and the forces that would inevitably be working against him in this specific production - or none at all, and he really was just some prettyboy dolt with less talent than enthusiasm. His effort to hit the mark, in some scenes, translated to visible strain. The actor's head popped up above his role several times in fact, and I found him uncomfortable with the homosexually themed segments which did violence to the work overall.

The court scenes were completely one-sided and goofy in their simplicity. It felt like the movie was building up to a conflict that never happened and wasn't ever supposed to. Nobody cared, it didn't matter, and it was impossible to believe in. Which was ironic, because it was (or should have been) the most important part of the movie.

Well, no. The poem itself was and should have been the most important part, and the writing/directing team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman did a wonderful job of interlacing that at least throughout the work. Anybody who approached the movie knowing full well who this man was and what the poem was all about had heard the thing before, and those who didn't likely wouldn't have been satisfied with a twenty-minute opening, four-pages of shakily imitated spoken word with no context and too many questions to answer at the outset.

One can be sure that the animated sequences are likely to be the most controversial aspect, currently and in retrospect. The problem with any kind of computerized recreation at all (short of a seventy-million dollar budget) is that within six months it will always look insincere and laughable and blocky and might as well have been done with painted cardboard. Which would have been a far more enveloping aesthetic, as a matter of fact, but no less: I was satisfied with the work I was shown in this regard. They chose a medium and ran with it. I can respect that, and in doing so they managed to illustrate the meat of the thing with more clarity than I think anyone ever has or will try to. It was a good mix of literal translation and soaring abstract that added more than it took away. What else can you do during a monologue? I would have been infinitely less impressed with mute scenes of Franco's Ginsberg waltzing down the street looking winsome and disaffected, or still more handicam shots of the actor reading aloud in some candlelit auditorium flophouse. Certainly not more courtroom footage. These people did a good job utilizing the five or six backdrops they had at their disposal, whatever that means.

All in all I would watch it again. It lends credibility to the beast itself and overall does not mishandle the subject material. It is something I would recommend to a friend, and so I will to you.

Watch Howl.