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| James Franco portrays Allen Ginsberg in the 2010 film Howl. |
Just last night, I was watching
Howl. Allen Ginsberg’s biopic: A film about the obscenity trial of his published piece,
Howl. Set in the 50s, the movie centers on a court trial, where the prosecution regarded the material (Ginsberg’s Howl) crass and insulting, something that requires banning --defense thought otherwise. Several witnesses, some of whom were credible literary giants, at the time, were called forth to the stand, in court proceedings, where arguments on freedom of speech and creative expression were explicitly discussed --whether or not the actual poem has literary merit. In a nutshell, the trial went in favor of the publisher. And all’s well that ends well in that San Francisco courtroom.
The real beauty of the film though, lies not within the court drama, but in the effective retelling of the poem itself, replete with breath-taking animation and rich images depicting the subcontext of each of the poem's lines. I won’t spoil much but I do recommend seeing it for yourself --figure out what lead me to say, with full conviction, that
Ginsberg truly was a genius.
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