Tags: Howl, download free, Howl online movie, Howl film watch, watch Howl movie, Watch online movie Howl trailer, free online movie Howl, online film Howl , Howl movie Howl, Howl movie review, Howl video songs
Cast and CrewCast: James Franco as Allen Ginsberg,Mary-Louise Parker as Gail Potter, Jeff Daniels as Professor David Kirk
Director:Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Producer: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, Elizabeth Redleaf, Christine K Walker
Music Director: Carter Burwell
Release Date: 24 Sep 2010
Genre:Drama
Language:English
Hollywood movie online English movie online Romance movie Romantic movie online movie movie movie review movie story free Howl English Hollywood Film The film Directed by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman.
The Story:
Howl the film consists of three interwoven aspects: the early life of Ginsberg (Franco) in New York City and his evolution as a writer and poet; an animated re-imagining of the poem “Howl”; and the obscenity trial San Francisco poet and City Lights Bookstore co-founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers), faced after publishing the titular poem, in which Ginsberg made references to drug use and homosexuality (the latter of which in the 1950s was still considered taboo). “Sir, you cannot translate poetry into prose,” remarks academic Mark Schorer (Treat Williams) during a section of Howl covering the 1957 obscenity trial surrounding Allen Ginsberg’s eponymous poem. “That’s why it is poetry.” Schorer is commenting upon the prosecutorial style of San Francisco attorney Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn), whose case against the controversial piece involved asking “expert witnesses” to concretely define the various sexual allusions and lyrical abstractions that Ginsberg liberally sprinkled throughout his masterwork. However, he could very well be referring to the plight of writer-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, whose film attempts to tease out the legal, social, and biographical significance of Ginsberg’s groundbreaking generational ode without explaining away its propulsive, elusive essence. Documentarians whose previous films chronicled such LGBT topics as queer representation in American cinema (The Celluloid Closet) and the persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany (Paragraph 175), Epstein and Friedman have publicly stated their desire to forego in Howl the talking-heads-and-archival-footage approach in favor of something more diffuse and allusive. This turns out to be a triptych structure, which interweaves a re-enactment of the 1957 obscenity trial; an imagined interview with Ginsberg (James Franco) occurring at roughly the same historic moment as the trial, accompanied by brief flashbacks to Ginsberg’s younger self; and a recreation of Ginsberg’s original reading of “Howl” at San Francisco’s Six Gallery on October 7, 1955. As Ginsberg recites the poem onstage, surrealistic animated interludes illustrate its images and ideas.
It’s a noble effort, but all the well-intentioned narrative curlicues in the world cannot obscure the conceptual dullness at Howl’s center. For what does this refracted take reveal to us about “Howl”? Well, that its author fits snugly into a long cinematic lineage of scruffy yet photogenic outsiders, all of whom spin personal suffering into artistic gold. Young people and liberal-leaning academics tend to “get” form-pushing literary works, while stodgy old folks scowl and raise an eyebrow. Oh, and censorship: definitely not a good thing. It’s San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. HOWL, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society’s reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment—the birth of a counterculture. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman navigate a seamless segue from their documentary roots to masterful storytellers. They expand the notion of how a “true story” can be realized on film by not simply relying on facts but enlisting cinematic vision to capture the Zeitgeist of an era. The amazing cast provides the extra passion and urgency that are sure to introduce HOWL to the best minds of a new generation. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” is no easy subject to take on, especially when it comes to adapting the poem to film. Complicating matters further, writer-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman envisioned something far beyond a standard narrative retelling; they wanted a piece with a number of different layers.James Franco portrays Ginsberg in three elements of the film – during the first public reading of “Howl,” during an interview, and while recreating moments in Ginsberg’s life. Then there’s the animation of the poem itself as well as a star-studded depiction of the 1957 obscenity trial.
“Sir, you cannot trans
Clearly this isn’t just a film about a poem- it’s about the poem, it is the poem and it’s a biopic. Fitting all that into one 90-minute film was likely no easy task, but Epstein and Friedman certainly had a plan of action in mind when tackling the challenge. See what the duo had to say about every step of the process, from bringing the poem to life through animation to finding their Ginsberg and their courtroom players.
Epstein and Friedman also took the time to touch on their upcoming film, Lovelace. No, not the already infamous Lindsay Lohan film – a mistake I made myself – but their own production about the porn superstar turned anti-pornography activist. Check it all out in the video interview below.
Howl Movie Review:
PROBABLY NO WORK of American literature of the mid-twentieth century has taken on so many identities as Allen Ginsberg’s 1955 poem “Howl”: Beat anthem, First Amendment cause célèbre, Lower East Side fringe festival. It’s safe to say that even those who have never read the poem would recognize its haunting opening lines: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” It’s even safer to say that few of its admirers would have considered “Howl” a likely subject for a motion picture. Who would make a poem into a movie anyway? That’s even more unlikely than Ginsberg appearing in a Gap ad!
Nevertheless, with their new film Howl, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have managed to do just that—forging a highly original solution to the thorny problems inherent in the task. The approach they take is at once minimal and maximal, stretching far beyond the directors’ documentary roots. (They are perhaps best known for their 1995 collaboration The Celluloid Closet; Epstein won an Academy Award in 1985 for his direction of The Times of Harvey Milk.) By dividing their focus between this iconic poem in performance and the scandalous 1957 First Amendment–rights trial in the San Francisco Municipal Court (City Lights cofounder Lawrence Ferlinghetti was brought up on obscenity charges for publishing “Howl”), Epstein and Friedman have created a credible historical account of a seminal American literary event and an ode to free expression in our still censorious age.Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Howl, 2010, still from a black-and-white and color film in 35 mm and Super 16 mm, 90 minutes. Allen Ginsberg (James Franco).
To borrow another of Ginsberg’s titles, I can only think of Howl the movie as a “reality sandwich”: Words are the reality, lifted from interviews with Ginsberg and from the transcripts of the San Francisco court, combined in a multilevel form that suggests an extravagant club sandwich, stuffed with dramatic reenactments and scenes from the life, and heavily flavored with documentary sauce (not to mention an extravagant dollop of fantasy animation). Even the (few) minimal sets are precise re-creations, right down to the postcards of Baudelaire and Poe on Ginsberg’s refrigerator and the Dinah Washington record (Dinah Jams) sticking out of a box in his living room.
The sandwich’s first layer is a reenactment by actor James Franco of Ginsberg’s legendary reading of “Howl” at San Francisco’s Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, with such Beat icons as Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Peter Orlovsky in the audience. The second layer is a dramatization of Ginsberg (Franco) recording an interview with an unseen and unheard interviewer. The third layer, a reenactment of the 1957 obscenity trial, overtly connects the personal, the literary, and the political. The final layer, overlaid with Franco’s reading of “Howl,” is an extended animation sequence by graphic novelist and illustrator Eric Drooker.
In the material that constitutes the first two layers, Franco is the only person who speaks, portraying Ginsberg publicly, as a performer, and intimately, in his heymisher mensch mode. I was deeply skeptical of the decision to cast a heartthrob like Franco in the lead role, because it threatened to turn the film into yet another Hollywood version of the counterculture (though I’m sure Ginsberg creamed in his grave at the thought of looking like the General Hospital star, who has also played such gay icons as James Dean and Harvey Milk’s boyfriend). Incredibly, Franco both looks and sounds like Ginsberg. Not a matter of an elaborate makeover—a pair of heavy horn-rimmed black glasses and a beard do the trick. Franco inhabits Ginsberg so completely that even those who knew the poet well are taken aback by this remarkable performance. Plainly, Franco not only absorbed countless recordings of Ginsberg and studied archival footage—few people have been so abundantly documented as Ginsberg—but immersed himself in the poet’s spirit as well. The re-created reading at Six Gallery vividly calls up Ginsberg’s oracular presence. The heat of that electrifying event, immortalized by Kerouac in Dharma Bums as the “mad night,” was fueled not only by the words but by Ginsberg’s amazing delivery. His voice, deeply resonant and intensely passionate, could fill St. Mark’s Church or carry across an outdoor Be-In. Whether reciting poetry, singing along with a harmonium, or chanting om, Ginsberg exuded a charisma as vast as Walt Whitman’s America. Franco uncannily channels that energy.
The reality sandwich’s second layer—the interview—captures Ginsberg’s extraordinary candor and sociability. Like countless others, I experienced these qualities firsthand, when I met him in 1994. I introduced myself as a writer working on a book about the Beat Generation and organizing an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC (“Rebels: Painters and Poets of the 1950s”). I expected Ginsberg to grant me about fifteen minutes of his time; he generously gave me two hours. He wasn’t much interested in the book but he was highly enthusiastic about the show. He rambled around his scruffy three-room apartment at 437 East Twelfth Street, pulling down books, showing me photographs, and finally sitting me down at his kitchen table with his address book: “Take whatever you need.” He wasn’t pushing his own photographs but the work of his friends. He was the Grand Central of the counterculture, and his address book was the richest data bank imaginable. At his memorial, the poet Andy Clausen remarked that Ginsberg had more friends than anyone in history. That claim may not be as hyperbolic as it sounds. His nonchalant immediacy made people he had just met feel they were dear friends of his. I felt it within minutes of our meeting. Ginsberg’s genius for friendship and intimacy is evoked perfectly in the film. Franco, à la Ginsberg, speaks candidly without indulging in self-revelation, without playing “gay” or “Jewish.” For that period—the middle of the Eisenhower years—Ginsberg said things that were controversial in the extreme. However, such remarks were made as casually as his statement that he smoked marijuana about as often as he went to the movies. Personal openness that is not self-serving creates friendship.
The film’s trial scenes make up its factual core, and all of the dialogue in these segments is based on court transcripts. Unlike the average courtroom drama, Howl contains no dramatic Perry Mason reversals, no smoking gun, and the case isn’t cheapened by making certain figures cartoonish prudes and others noble defenders of freedom. (One reservation I do have, though, is that, while the film’s cast is universally excellent, the several famous actors who appear in court interfere in a way that I didn’t experience seeing Franco playing Ginsberg. Perhaps the problem is that their roles are essentially cameos—Oh, there’s Jeff Daniels! There’s Don Draper—I mean, Jon Hamm! There’s Mary-Louise Parker!) Although we already know the outcome of the trial—Ferlinghetti was found innocent and Howl & Other Poems went on to sell more than eight hundred thousand copies during Ginsberg’s lifetime—these courtroom scenes are a fascinating reminder of the limits imposed on literary expression in 1957. In 2010, when unblinking pornography is everywhere available on the Internet, it may seem astonishing that one of the most legally contentious lines at stake in the People v. Ferlinghetti was “[angelheaded hipsters] who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.” (The problem was “joy.)Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Howl, 2010, still from a black-and-white and color film in 35 mm and Super 16 mm, 90 minutes. From left:Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers) and Jake Ehrlich (Jon Hamm)......
Watch Movie Video:
No comments:
Post a Comment