The Beat Hotel

This documentary from Alan Govenar may be a bit of an acquired taste: you really have to care a lot about the writers, photographers, designers and artists associated with The Beat movement to keep you attention from wandering as the story unfolds. The film is a balance of historical footage and photos and modern day interviews with the people who lived in the cheap no-name hotel in Paris circa 1957. It does a good job of setting the scene for the audience, and of recreating what it must have been like for a stranger to walk into the smoke-filled lobby of the hotel (mostly hash and pot smoke if the remaining beat artists’ memories can be trusted). It’s not as successful in making the connection between the sex drugs and cheap rent and the art that was created; the film assumes that you not only know about The Beats but that you admire everything they did. If you don’t, the film is not for you.