Kill your darlings online9/18/2023 ![]() ![]() It’s much more lively than “On the Road,” last year’s snoozy adaptation of the Kerouac novel that presented fictionalized versions of some of the same characters, including Kerouac’s girlfriend, briefly played in the new film by Elizabeth Olsen. The excellently acted, fact-inspired “Kill Your Darlings” is a consistently interesting origin story with impressive period details that evoke not only Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus but Greenwich Village of seven decades ago. There’s also a touching subplot about Ginsberg’s poet father (David Cross) and his emotionally troubled mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The mischievous Carr becomes close friends with Ginsberg, and they participate in various pranks (stealing books) and daring behavior for the era, including inhaling nitrous oxide and exploring each other’s bodies. Kammerer is a former college teacher and ex-friend of Burroughs obsessed with Carr, whom he has followed and seduced on a couple of previous college campuses. To find out why, the debuting Krokidas and his co-screenwriter, Austin Bunn, show how Jersey boy Ginsberg fell into the hedonistic company of fellow Beat legends Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. It’s clear from the opening scene that Ginsberg’s pal Lucien Carr (the charismatic Dane DeHaan, who handily steals the movie from the erstwhile Harry Potter) is responsible for killing an older man, David Kammerer, creepily played by Michael C. Radcliffe’s portrayal as Ginsberg solidifies the fact that he can extend beyond his work on “Harry Potter.” Radcliffe does not shy away from portraying Ginsberg as a man enamored by Carr.Daniel Radcliffe continues stretching as an actor to play legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg as a gay Columbia University freshman discovering his sexuality in John Krokidas’ “Kill Your Darlings.” And although a murder takes place, the film is less a “Who done it?” than a “They did it,” set in 1940s Manhattan. Kerouac’s girlfriend Edie Parker (Elizabeth Olsen, “Liberal Arts”) and Carr’s mother Marian (Kyra Sedgwick, “The Closer”) are overlooked characters who influenced Kerouac and Carr. Though Ginsberg is affected by his mother’s illness, her existence is used for convenience to give Ginsberg advice and to bring him closer to Carr than for giving additional insight into Ginsberg’s personality. ![]() ![]() What is lost in the film are the female characters and their impact on the main characters. Each member of the Beat scene faces his own personal demons that affect his work later in life, which Krokidas depicts. The first scene depicts Carr standing in a body of water with a bloody Kammerer in his arms, followed by a screaming match between Ginsberg and Carr over a manuscript. Caar captivates Ginsberg and the audience instantaneously as he leaps onto the tables at Columbia’s library reciting lines from Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and even as he gradually falls apart due to his relationship with Kammerer.ĭirector and co-writer John Krokidas unabashedly depicts the Beat Generation’s formation as a meeting of brilliant but dark minds. DeHaan portrays Carr as a student who resists the constraints of society in life and in writing, and who is haunted by the endless sexual advances of David Kammerer (Michael C. Carr introduces Ginsberg to William Burroughs (Ben Foster, “Contraband”) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston, “Boardwalk Empire”), two of the Beat Generation’s central personalities.Īlthough the film follows the Beat Generation from Ginsberg’s perspective, the film clearly depicts Carr as the central person who brought the writers together. The film, directed by John Krokidas, is set in 1944 and follows Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe), then a freshman at Columbia University, who befriendsand eventually becomes infatuated withthe. Carr takes the young Ginsberg, a freshman who had never drank or smoked, on numerous adventures around New York. ![]() Once Ginsberg reaches the Big Apple, his life changes dramatically after meeting Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan, “In Treatment”), an engaging upperclassman. ![]()
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