James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in 'Howl'

The Beat goes on, and on, and the romance associated with the post-war / pre-hippie writers of the '50s continues to obsess and intrigue.

Although much Beat Generation writing has lost its critical luster over the years, the lasting fascination for students of American literature - and for documentarians Jeffrey Friedman ("Paragraph 175") and Rob Epstein ("The Life and Times of Harvey Milk") - is Allen Ginsberg, whose own life and times are recounted, and captured so affectionately, in "Howl."

Like the titular poem, which Ginsberg debuted in a San Francisco coffeehouse in 1955 and which was subsequently published by fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books, "Howl" the movie is loose-limbed, free-associative and joyous. Although the central narrative involves the 1957 obscenity trial against both Ferlinghetti and free expression, James Franco gives an idiosyncratic and utterly absorbing performance as Ginsberg, whose nonconformity, gayness and political resistance all seem central to a world on the cusp of change.

The courtroom sequences are shot like, well, courtroom sequences - and feature brief, brilliant bits by David Strathairn, Mary Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels as Ferlinghetti antagonists, and Jon Hamm for the defense. But Epstein and Friedman bring their nonfiction stylings to the rest of the movie, particularly the "interview" with Ginsberg, who talks as no writer ordinarily does about his anxieties, inspirations, expectations and sexual conflicts, all of which involved such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac (Todd Rotondi), Neal Cassady (Jon Prescott) and Peter Orlovksy (Aaron Tveit).

The heart of the film, in the end, is Franco's reading of "Howl," including its bravura crescendo of imagist exaltations and personal epiphanies. Seldom has a motion picture bestowed such splendor on the written / spoken word.