Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder

Cool
Ferlinghetti, a Rebirth of Wonder is a well-built entertaining history lesson about this dissident's life. This film works so well because of Ferlinghetti, he is a fascinating opinionated and outspoken man.

The first fifteen minutes are densely packed around some of the critical moments with his bookstore, City Lights Books. The director sets the tone for where the film will go and the language he will use. There is liberal use of Ferlinghetti reading his poetry and him speaking directly to the camera. The film traces Lawrence Ferlinghetti's life from his birth in 1919 to present day, roughly 2010's. George Whitman opened the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co in 1951, one year later Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Books in San Francisco. They were good friends that intended to swap stores every year. Both stores became too popular for this to happen. There is a long discussion of the 1950's Howl a book of poetry that politicians tried to ban as pornographic, but was a key...

A long life truly well lived
While inevitably associated with the Beats, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's life has encompassed far more than that influential literary & cultural movement, to which he contributed so much. In this fine documentary, Ferlinghetti's overall life & work are introduced to the general viewer in loving detail. I've been a devotee since my discovery of his seminal "A Coney Island of the Mind" nearly 50 years ago; but in this film I learned a lot that I hadn't known about the man, particularly about his early life. What a story in itself! Dickens might have written such twists & turns -- and these illuminate the path Ferlinghetti's life would take in the following decades.

But the major part of the film is more than mere biography, however fascinating. What we're given is a real sense of the man: his work not only as poet & publisher, but as painter, political activist, and cultural critic. What's especially striking is his warmth & sense of humor, which he often uses to make some...



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