Cinema Review: Howl

Will James Franco deliver a decent Allen Ginsberg - or will you be asking him to Beat it? Cindy Suzuki reviews...

The '50s jazz atmosphere of Howl opens, in its trademark black and white, on a 1950s poetry reading in an underground wine cellar. It's a bar atmosphere; huge jugs of whiskey and water get downed, laughter and craziness is the tempo, candles light the room - this is the City Lights Bookshop, a legendary underground literature institution, and it feels like 'the real boho'.

Then Ginsberg, played by James Franco stands up and reels off 'Howl' for the first time - and it's a reading which will stretch throughout the movie, split up by luminous animations, recreations of interviews with the poet, and court case scenes in which 'Howl' will be tried for obscenity.

The poem (itself reviewed in the current issue of Artrocker Magazine) is loosely speaking a condemnation of society's double-standards, a lament for Ginsberg's doomed generation, a celebration of his generation as they out-run the trappings of life, and a letter to a friend he met while in a mental institution (as he was being 'cured' for homosexuality).

It lends itself well to the lucid animations, which at their best depict Industrial America as a luminous demon skyscraper, similar to the Mount Doom at the end of Tolkien's Return of the King. At worst the animations are a bit too slick and smooth, spelling out the meaning of the poem in obvious, unsubtle ways.

The good news is that James Franco is pretty convincing as Ginsberg: at first awkwardly self-conscious, he soon finds his rhythm and raps the interviews away, over a seemingly never-ending fog of cigarette smoke. The court case scenes meanwhile see Mad Men's Jon Hamm defend the poem with dignified self-righteousness, convincing the court that "Different people use different words".

By turns melancholy and drizzly, thought-provoking and lively, Howl is a must-see movie for both the Beat-curious and Ginsberg's established fans.