A FRUSTRATED GENERATION FINDS A VOICE—AND THE SOUND IS HOWL
If you have never attended a poetry reading, now you have the chance. Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is a poetry recitation, explication, exegesis, and deconstruction with graphic imagery unexcelled in film. The focus is Allen Ginsberg’s 75-cent, 26-page jeremiad Howl, which used the form of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to articulate something buried deep inside the psyche of young Americans after World War II. Prolix, complex, with sexual—and homosexual—imagery, the poem not only launched the Beat Generation but also occasioned perhaps the most memorable obscenity trial in American history. When the film begins, Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco) is premiering the first lines of his poem at a San Francisco coffeehouse (Six Gallery) during 1955: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked . . . “ For those who did not experience the mood of the times, the ravages of the House Un-American Activities Committee enforcing a conformity that frightened academics in ivory towers, Hollywood screenwriters, trade-union leaders, and many others, the release of the film in 2010 speaks to an America cowed by fearmongers and bullied by mendacious rhetoriticians but yet enjoying the freedom that Ginsberg pursued as essential for establishing the self-worth of all who are different and seek truth. The film ends with credits explaining what happened to those involved in Ginsberg’s quest, including surviving City Lights proprietor Lawrence Ferlinghetti (played in the film by Andrew Rogers) and an aged Ginsberg singing one of his poems. What perhaps justifies superlatives is the 1957 trial, with publisher Ferlinghetti as the defendant, on the charge of obscenity. The arguments in the trial are presented by prosecutor Ralph McIntosh (played by David Strathairn) and defense counsel Jake Ehrlich (played by John Hamm). The Political Film Society has nominated Howl as best film on human rights of 2010. MH
LONELINESS AND MONEY ARE AT THE ROOT OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK
The main focus of The Social Network is who profited from Facebook. Director Peter Fincher rushed to film Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (2009), assured that millions of Americans who have unmasked their privacy on the website will be intrigued by an exposé of how the world’s youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg), struck it rich yet never sought riches. The story begins during 2003 with Zuckerberg clumsily unable to attract friendship from a fictional date, Erica Albricht (played by Rooney Mara), by out-arguing her. He then retreats to a Harvard dorm (though filmed at Johns Hopkins), to get revenge on Harvard coeds. He develops a social network program by stealing one casually developed elsewhere on campus. Thereafter, he expands and markets the idea to elite colleges, including Stanford, where he soon attracts the interest of Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake), inventor of then defunct Napster, and then dumps Eduardo Saverin (played by Andrew Garfield), his original CFO, who fails not only to read the fine print in a contract but also to understand the real world of high finance. The film is laced with sex, in which mostly Asian women are treated as mere sex objects and, with the exception of Erica, appear to like their degradation. Zuckerberg is consistently portrayed as an unlikable asshole, whereas those he cheats are the nice guys in the film, though the reality may differ. The point of the film appears to be that money is made by those with vision, manic energy, and the right connections, whereas users of Facebook appear as self-indulgent neurotics. What holds the film together is a running lawsuit deposition with flashbacks. Zuckerberg’s attorney eventually suggests that he should appease his adversaries with payoffs of substantial millions to keep Facebook unencumbered by endless damaging litigation. Credits at the end provide information on what subsequently happened to those featured in the story. MH