Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Directed by John Krokidas
A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
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The Beat poets have inspired writers and filmmakers for many decades now, resulting in innumerable documentaries and movies, ranging from the amazing Naked Lunch to the terrible On the Road .
Ben Foster channels Burroughs in a delightfully dry rendering as the future “Naked Lunch” author finds himself mildly amused by talk of a “literary revolution.”
"Kill Your Darlings" is not as kitschy as 2010's " Howl " (with James Franco as Ginsberg) or as dull as director Walter Salles' Kerouac adaptation, " On the Road ," but it's a muddled and silly enterprise that wastes a wonderful central performance by skinny, bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe as the young Ginsberg, whose virginity, bookishness, Jewishness, relative poverty and closeted homosexuality mark him as an outsider even after he is accepted to an exclusive Ivy League school.
James Franco did it a few years ago in the little-seen “Howl,” and now Daniel Radcliffe – apparently well known to the public for some sort of fantasy-adventure series – plays the even younger Ginsberg as a Columbia undergrad, exploring poetry, drugs and sexuality in John Krokidas’ energetic debut feature, “Kill Your Darlings.”
The entire cast (including Elizabeth Olsen as Jack’s fiancé) is excellent, and the film rises above James Franco’s solid turn as Ginsberg in “Howl.”
Perhaps because On the Road (2013) was so lackluster and Howl (2010) was so insular and specialized, I was not exactly looking forward to another movie about the Beat Generation.
Over the past three years there have been no less than four narrative films about the beat generation, starting with “Howl” in September 2010.
From last year's " On the Road " to 2010's trippy " Howl ," they've proven to be largely film-resistant.
"Kill Your Darlings" is not as kitschy as 2010's " Howl " (with James Franco as Ginsberg) or as dull as director Walter Salles' Kerouac adaptation, " On the Road ," but it's a muddled and silly enterprise that wastes a wonderful central performance by skinny, bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe as the young Ginsberg, whose virginity, bookishness, Jewishness, relative poverty and closeted homosexuality mark him as an outsider even after he is accepted to an exclusive Ivy League school.
Unlike the lusty recent adaptation of “On The Road,” “Kill Your Darlings” has somewhat loftier goals.
But despite its unsure moments, “Kill Your Darlings” has considerable advantages over both Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Howl” and Walter Salles’ ambitious, hit-and-miss adaptation of Kerouac’s iconic “On the Road,” which featured Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart.
"Kill Your Darlings" is a microcosm of Allen Ginsburg's college beginnings, and indeed covers the period in Jack Kerouac's life prior to him writing his most famous piece, "On The Road".
Killer Films, which nursed Kill Your Darlings through its long development, also deserves credit for supporting Krokidas with its own expertise in movies based on real-life incidents involving queerness and murder, Kimberly Peirce ’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992) being notable examples.
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Killer Films, which nursed Kill Your Darlings through its long development, also deserves credit for supporting Krokidas with its own expertise in movies based on real-life incidents involving queerness and murder, Kimberly Peirce ’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992) being notable examples.
With the focus on Ginsberg's pining for Carr, and his uneasy witness to Kammerer's humiliations at the idolized boy's hands, the ancillary battles fought in the name of Romanticism and Joycean abandon occasionally bring to mind an Ivy League Animal House, with disapproving lectures from the dean, scandalized parents, and a crusty poetry prof condescending to Ginsberg as “Whitman Junior.”
(One arguable exception: 1998's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which offered a colorful and hyperbolic -- if less than comprehensive -- peek inside Kerouac's mind.)
Added to the mix is Kammerer associate William Burroughs (Ben Foster, "The Messenger"), found in the bathtub wearing a gas mask.
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Say what you will about Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby or Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, but for as messy and flawed as they clearly are they remain artistic visions of periods long gone.
Elizabeth Olsen ("Martha Marcy May Marlene") is tart and sharp as Kerouac's first wife Edie.