Howl – review

Having now watched this a second time, I feel that a biopic of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg might well be a good idea. Casting James Franco might be a good idea, too. Yet this lumpily constructed and oddly negligible piece of work somehow isn't the film: more like a laborious 84-minute trailer. The action intercuts between various dramatically inert scenarios: a beautiful young Ginsberg reads his famous poem Howl in a smoky bar to a collection of cap-wearing hipsters: he reads in a (biographically accurate) sing-song drone. An older, bearded Ginsberg gives an interview to an unseen journalist. The obscenity trial of Howl takes place boringly, anticlimactically, and in Ginsberg's absence. And recitations of the poem itself are illustrated by a weird, pedantic animation, like the sort of thing that used to feature on the Old Grey Whistle Test over an interminable track by some prog rock artist. It's decently acted, particularly by Franco, who is always watchable. But it fails to engage the heart and the question of why we should read Ginsberg now is unanswered.