Cast: James Franco, Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker
It is hard to work out what demographic ‘Howl’ has been made for. Fans of Alan Ginsberg will gawp at the obvious treatment of the court case that surrounded the publication of ‘Howl’ in 1957; they will react with lukewarm shrugs of indifference to the ‘far-too-literal’ translation of the poem into a tawdry animated sequences, and they will wonder why the hell the actor from Spiderman has been paid to mimic Ginsberg in a series of faux-interviews. People who aren’t fans of Alan Ginsberg… wont go and see the film.
Epstein and Friedman’s film seems eager to break the boundaries of the ‘biopic’ genre by splicing together the aforementioned elements to create a portrait of Ginsberg and his most famous work; but the devil is in the detail, and the unnecessary use of black-and-white film and the constant shots of tape-recorders during interviews suggest that the filmmakers have not stemmed the flow of clichés as successfully as they might have hoped.
Franco is perfectly capable of mimicking Ginsberg, but this is not acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman was acting when he portrayed Truman Capote, DeNiro was acting when he portrayed LaMotta, because in these instances the actors had to take the essence of a person (everything from facial tics to childhood fears) and absorb them in order to portray that person in a dramatic situation. In ‘Howl’, Franco just has to sit on a sofa and mimic Ginsberg’s hand movements and elongated syllables.
The courtroom sequences serve the dual purpose of showcasing ‘the hot guy from Mad Men’ (which might bring the producers a few dollars closer to breaking even) and providing a pretentious and didactic platform for the filmmakers to broadcast their views on censorship… these weighty monologues on a culture of fear and censorship remind us of a shocking fact that I’m sure we would all have forgotten were it not for this film… our governments might be trying to control what we know!!! Shock horror.
It is hard to work out what demographic ‘Howl’ has been made for. Fans of Alan Ginsberg will gawp at the obvious treatment of the court case that surrounded the publication of ‘Howl’ in 1957; they will react with lukewarm shrugs of indifference to the ‘far-too-literal’ translation of the poem into a tawdry animated sequences, and they will wonder why the hell the actor from Spiderman has been paid to mimic Ginsberg in a series of faux-interviews. People who aren’t fans of Alan Ginsberg… wont go and see the film.
Epstein and Friedman’s film seems eager to break the boundaries of the ‘biopic’ genre by splicing together the aforementioned elements to create a portrait of Ginsberg and his most famous work; but the devil is in the detail, and the unnecessary use of black-and-white film and the constant shots of tape-recorders during interviews suggest that the filmmakers have not stemmed the flow of clichés as successfully as they might have hoped.
Franco is perfectly capable of mimicking Ginsberg, but this is not acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman was acting when he portrayed Truman Capote, DeNiro was acting when he portrayed LaMotta, because in these instances the actors had to take the essence of a person (everything from facial tics to childhood fears) and absorb them in order to portray that person in a dramatic situation. In ‘Howl’, Franco just has to sit on a sofa and mimic Ginsberg’s hand movements and elongated syllables.
The courtroom sequences serve the dual purpose of showcasing ‘the hot guy from Mad Men’ (which might bring the producers a few dollars closer to breaking even) and providing a pretentious and didactic platform for the filmmakers to broadcast their views on censorship… these weighty monologues on a culture of fear and censorship remind us of a shocking fact that I’m sure we would all have forgotten were it not for this film… our governments might be trying to control what we know!!! Shock horror.
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