Allen Ginsberg, who has no thoughts of writing poetry, leaves a very troubled New Jersey family to go to Columbia. There he comes of age artistically and sexually. He meets the later day Beats, all of them relentlessly displaying the signature behaviors which would later make them infamous They all frolic around.. The seeds of a movement are sown. Kind of an old movie plot: Andy Hardy with sex, drugs, jazz and a crazy mother.
Poor America has no poetry but the doggerel of Ogden Nash, the film says, ignoring the contemporary modernist poetry of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Thus, Ginsburg, it says, rose as a unique pioneer poet from the miasma of jazz, drugs, avant garde friends and almost out of the closet homosexuality to which he was introduced.. The film is much too simplistic to be taken as a consequential story of the creation of the Beat Movement. Women are treated badly in the few moments they appear, and Ginsberg is reduced to a mere observer for some periods of time
Then there is a killing. Things get muddled. Very muddled. Ginsberg who was in no way involved tries to help out and is castigated and rejected. We don't know why. Everybody goes their own way. End of story. All of these diverse elements do not add up to a coherent story.. The script writers have included too many of their "darlings" at the expense of cohesiveness.
I can't see how this would be of interest to anyone not fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, the Beat Movement. For those who are, this is worth seeing as long as they have only modest expectations.
Poor America has no poetry but the doggerel of Ogden Nash, the film says, ignoring the contemporary modernist poetry of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. Thus, Ginsburg, it says, rose as a unique pioneer poet from the miasma of jazz, drugs, avant garde friends and almost out of the closet homosexuality to which he was introduced.. The film is much too simplistic to be taken as a consequential story of the creation of the Beat Movement. Women are treated badly in the few moments they appear, and Ginsberg is reduced to a mere observer for some periods of time
Then there is a killing. Things get muddled. Very muddled. Ginsberg who was in no way involved tries to help out and is castigated and rejected. We don't know why. Everybody goes their own way. End of story. All of these diverse elements do not add up to a coherent story.. The script writers have included too many of their "darlings" at the expense of cohesiveness.
I can't see how this would be of interest to anyone not fascinated by, and knowledgeable about, the Beat Movement. For those who are, this is worth seeing as long as they have only modest expectations.