Sundance 2010: HOWL
I wanted badly to love HOWL. I’m a beat-era fanboy and have been for decades. This is derivative of my, more general, love for lyricism in literature and jazz which extends well beyond the beats and is not a celebration of beat lifestyle or philosophy. Though I do find much of the later compelling.
HOWL is not considered a documentary by its producers or those that make the decisions about what goes in which category at Sundance. It certainly seemed like one to me. I found it unusual, but a documentary none the less.
I’m not at all sure why it matters. I think it may be similar to the tendency of authors to cast their work as non-fiction when it isn’t, because the market for fiction is so very very lousy. The market for documentaries is poor relative to their dramatic counterpoints, or so I’ve heard. That the circumstances in film are exactly the opposite of that in publishing is curious indeed.
The HOWL audience could be divided into two parts. The beat fanboys (and fangirls) and those, unknowing at the outset, who watched in wondrous trepidation of all those flying penises. Both groups had reason for some disappointment. It would have been impossible not to disappoint the first group because, as dedicated cultists, we are protective of our favorite facts or persons or theories. We are easily upset by perceived misrepresentation or omission. We tend to squeal. I suspect that the film left many of the later group just wondering why.
This is an odd movie. It is the story of the poem and not the poet. There are three intermingled veins: a James Franco narrative which both presents and explains the poem, lengthy animation sequences which interpret the poem, and a courtroom simulation which portrays the obscenity trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, following publication of HOWL, in dramatic form.
I found the Franco narrative limited in that it dealt almost exclusively with the text of the poem. The animation left me thinking that time could have been better spent dealing with more context from the life of Allen Ginsberg and the other beats in a traditional documentary form. It was evident in the Q&A that some are upset with any animated interpretation of the poem. I disagree. Interpretation of literature in film is not exactly new. It just didn’t fit with anything else. I enjoyed the trial simulation scenes most. David Strathairn and John Hamm are well cast and the dialogue which is taken directly from the trial transcripts is fascinating. If a drama was the goal than this should have been expanded to make up the core of a film along the lines of Good Night and Good Luck.
My personal complaint with most discussion of beat literature is the assumption that the style was born of jazz and formed completely new in the minds of Kerouac and Ginsberg. What about Thomas Wolfe? Of the Look Homeward Angel variety. Kerouac describes himself and Wolfe walking past one another on the Brooklyn bridge as a passing-of-the-baton sort of moment. He acknowledges Wolfe’s style as the predecessor to his own. And it so obviously is.
This is the problem with the beat fanboys. Impossible to satisfy.