Thaindian News

September 24, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Well, ‘Howl’ has now hit the screens and one could conclude it up in a simple word that the entire movie is about a poem, nothing more, nothing less! It is basically a movie about a poet and his creation as well as the transmission of his literary work into poetry of some substance. However, it has one point in its favor, it is actually interesting quite unlike last year’s ‘ Bright Star’.

The central character of Allen Ginsberg is played by James Franco, who is a prospective poet residing in New Jersey and decides to hang out with the so called enlightened crowd; smoking pot and doing all the other things that are scoffed at by the society of the 1950s.

Ginsberg is intent on creating something path breaking even as he struggles with the complexities of being a homosexual while finding himself being attracted more and more to the Bohemian society that has to remain underground.

His work, ‘Howl’ is an interesting mixture of rage, idealism and disillusions and finds expression in poetic language that is both grounds breaking and sexually explicit at the same time.

Franco has managed to work with a script crafted directly from the interviews given by Ginsberg himself. The depiction of the discussion with the past, his struggles with being of a different sexual orientation and being attracted to the likes of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy. The result is extremely colorful and takes us back to the impressionable age of a period overwrought with romance. Understandably, the great writers and poets had been at their literary best then with endless possibilities seeming to be open for them.

While Franco manages to turn out a commendable performance his appearance, in the movie, does not have any similarity with Allen Ginsberg at all.