Howl

In San Francisco, 1957, an American masterpiece was put on trial. HOWL is a feature film about this pivotal moment in the birth of the counter-culture. The story is told primarily through three interweaving threads: the trial; re-enactments with the young Allen Ginsberg (James Franco); and the poem itself, animated by graphic novelist and Ginsberg collaborator Eric Drooker as a Beat Fantasia, scored by Carter Burwell. The genre-expanding form of the film echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. The re-enacted trial is the narrative spine of the film, playing out themes that are still resonant today: definitions of obscenity, the limits of free expression and the nature of art. The defense attorney is Jake Ehrlich (Jon Hamm), a celebrity civil liberties lawyer. Prosecuting attorney Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn) tries to prove that the work is obscene, while struggling to understand it. Prosecution witnesses are an English teacher (Mary-Louise Parker) who finds the poem obscene; and a professor (Jeff Daniels) who has a very definite idea of what is and isn't good writing. Defense witnesses are 50s intellectuals (Treat Williams, Alessandro Nivola) who speak to the poem's cultural and artistic merits. The conservative presiding judge is Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban), who delivers a surprisingly impassioned decision. In an imagined interview with flashbacks, the young Ginsberg muses on his own creative process and the personal struggle and liberation he had to go through. The poem itself lives as vibrant animation -- an imagined journey inside the mind of the artist. (official distributor synopsis)