Wednesday, June 15, 2011
LANDMARK
Today's film was
James Franco as Allen Ginsberg.
This is my life in one picture. It happens as I am coming out of college.
I had met up with the beats (who Ginsberg says didn't really exist. Just a bunch of friends). But I tried to play it straight. I had the look and all. And, like Ginsberg, was rather successful in the business world.
But I continued to read subversively. Eventually the tipping point came about when I realized that I could not live away being gay. Precisely the point of Howl. Not only in the general but in the gay sense. He knew that he had written a gay liberation document and says so.
It predicts the course of my life.
It ends with a blessing on all the souls gathered in the arms of this poem.
Every word in this film was uttered by the person being enacted.
Part of the film is a trial. Another an interview that Ginsberg gave. The reading of the poem itself.
This all predates the later hippie Ginsberg. The period begins with Ginsberg just out of college and ends with the obscenity trial.
Everyone wears khakis and even oxfords and regular open shirts. An occasional informal tee shirt, white, is seen.
Ginsberg meets Peter Orlovsky. Life partners from their meeting.
Then there are the cartoons, which everyone, but me, seems to hate. I think that they are a necessary break from the other visual of Ginsberg reading the poem in a coffee shop.
I liked the art. It seemed to fit.
I think that this is why The Times didn't make it a Critics Pick. Nasty. They should see the trial again, the free expression part.
This film is a 5 and I will see it again in the best gay movies fest later in the year.
Labels: films, gay history, gay liberation
