The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
December 2007 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

In the late 1980s, I was a graduate student in a creative-writing program and heard many poets read. The one I remember most vividly nearly 20 years later is Allen Ginsberg. Most poetry readings were held in a small windowless room strewn with uncomfortable chairs. There was rarely a full house, although I was responsible for a couple, giving extra credit to those who took the composition and literature classes I taught if they went to a reading and wrote about it. Coercion worked.

Ginsberg, in contrast, read in the student union -- the main hall -- and he packed the place. His reading was a free-form affair -- people came and went around him -- and longer than usual. I recall that he sang a bit and read "Kaddish," the famous long poem about his mother. I think he had given up reading "Howl" in public by this time, so "Kaddish" was a special treat. He seemed to enjoy the attention, but he didn't try to cultivate it. He was America's unofficial poet laureate, and his reading was truly an event.

So it was with a little personal background and a lot of interest that I watched The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, a 1994 film that has been re-released on DVD in an expanded version with previously unseen footage. Ginsberg was one of the people for whom his occupation, "poet," always preceded his name, but as this movie shows, he was a very complex person -- brilliant, probing, peacemaking and searching. It's an intensely confessional documentary, befitting Ginsberg's poetry, covering the important facets of his life as an artist and intellectual, and as a son.

Director Jerry Aronson began filming Ginsberg in 1982 and accumulated more than 120 hours of footage on him for this movie. It is not uniform in quality -- some of it looks 25 years old -- but the video image is never awful, and its variability underscores the many aspects of Ginsberg's character. The stereo sound is clear, so you won't miss a syllable of "Howl." Ginsberg was partially defined by the company he kept, and the extras show him alongside William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Bob Dylan, the latter at Jack Kerouac's grave. There are also excerpts of Ginsberg reading his work, a photo gallery, and dozens of interviews with people who knew and admired him. The extras span two DVDs and are just what you'll want to see after viewing the movie.

At one point, the camera captures Ginsberg playfully mixing metaphors. "Walking on water wasn't built in a day," he says. That's the feeling I have about this movie. It's a blockbuster filled with small touches about a universal traveler of consciousness and art. It demands to be watched over and over.

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