A Review of Howl the movie by Stanley Fish

Did you catch Stanley Fish's review of James Franco in Howl? Click here for the link!

A Review of Howl with James Franco

Howl, starring James Franco as Alan Ginsberg, focuses on the obscenity trial and controversy that surrounded the poem. Using a variety of cinematographic techniques, the film is constructed in a nonlinear fashion. The directors chose to split the movie into four different sections. In one, Franco reads the poem to a passionate and approving young audience in a bar. In another, Franco is interviewed in his home by an unknown journalist. Still another focuses on the actual court case and the cases presented by both sides. The final, and in my opinion, most unusual portion of the film involve animated segments meant to interpret the meaning of the poem.

Although Franco appears to be an unusual choice to play Ginsberg, he does a surprisingly good job in his portrayal of the famous poet. Known for his good looks, Franco’s appearance is not the center of the film’s focus at any point. Rather, he is able to accurately imitate Ginsberg in the personal interviews with the journalist, particularly when talking about his sexuality. In an unusual yet interesting approach, Franco uses analogies relating writing to his love life. Through this, the audience is able to gain a deeper understanding of Ginsberg’s emotional attraction to the same sex and suffers through the ups and downs of his eventful life.

Throughout the trial, we learn that people are afraid of the poem because they do not understand it. In the climax, the prosecuting attorney even admits that he does not understand the poem’s literary meaning. While there are some distractions caused by the star power of Jon Hamm, the trial provides the audience with a brief analysis of the poem and learns some of its true literary merit.

~A.B.

Review: James Franco as Ginsberg in Howl

When Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was made into a movie and produced in 2010 they chose James Franco to play Ginsberg. Although they bare no overwhelming physical similarities, Franco graduated from UCLA with an English major and is currently at Yale getting his masters, so they both share a different passion for English. To my surprise, the movie adaptation of Howl did not go into the details of Ginsberg’s personal life, nor did it show him recite the entire poem. The movie focused on the obscenity trial and whether or not Howl was of any literary value and whether it was too perverse. Ginsberg himself was not involved with the trial because it was the publisher of City Light Books who was the one actually put on trial, even though he didn’t write "Howl," he simply supported it.

The movie jumped around from scenes of the trial, to an interview with Ginsberg, to shots of him typing out Howl on the typewriter, and then scenes of him reciting the poem at clubs. The court deemed that Howl did indeed have literary value, and that just because that some of the language was perverse and not accepted in society, it still was a valuable piece of work. Luckily for us, Howl continued to be published after the trial and continued to be one of the most notable poems written.

I also thought it was very exciting that we go to school in Berkeley, a place where Allen Ginsberg wrote parts of his poetry. I saw the movie at an old movie theater in college and that too gave the movie a more authentic feeling. All in all, the movie artistically provided an accurate portrayal of Howl and I personally believe James Franco did a good job acting as Ginsberg because he tapped into this literary person and the producers did not cast him as a sex symbol.

~C.M.