HOWL

Sanctimonious shushing filled the theatre as Howl premiered at the Sydney Film Festival last year. Whether the crowd was there for Ginsberg, Franco, or Cinema was hard to say, but certainly these were Serious Film Goers, and they were not to be easily impressed. Or so I thought. Over the next 84 minutes, however, I was proved wrong, as they fawned, gasped and cheered their way through a film that never managed to hit its mark. Splitting its narrative three ways between Ginsberg the man, Howl the obscenity trial, and somewhat esoteric and almost humorously literal animation accompanying the poem, Howl was a schizophrenic experience. Although James Franco was customarily flawless in his reading of Ginsberg (I could have very happily watched solely his performance for the length of the film), the trial scenes, and particularly the animation, seemed somewhat like a rendering of Howl for Dummies. This was disappointing for an old Beat fan, and no doubt for fans of Franco, whose nuanced performance was underscored by the rest of the film’s total lack of insight into what it was that made Howl so dangerous and unique in the first place. An interesting watch for the central performance (and for fans of the never-disappointing Mary Louise Parker), but leave your expectations at the door, or you’ll see the best minds of your generation destroyed by disappointment. (KB)** (both for Franco)