Browse all reviews by letter     A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 0 - 9

USA 2013
Directed by
John Krokidas
104 minutes
Rated MA

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
2.5 stars

Kill Your Darlings

Synopsis: It‘s 1944 and a quiet, young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) is a freshman at New York's Columbia University. There he meets the attractively iconoclastic Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) and through him, William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston).

Somewhat surprisingly, given its niche market appeal, Kill Your Darlings is released by Sony Pictures International. Perhaps this is the start of its problems for its conventional period film values are ill-suited to subject-matter that would have benefitted from a more realist, low-fi  treatment. Underlying this is another and bigger problem and that is that the mythology of the Beat Generation and its key players are so entrenched in our cultural consciousness that any attempt to recreate them outside of a pure documentary form runs the risk of seeming ersatz.  Although strictly speaking set in the pre-Beat era of the 1940s, the aura of impending history hangs over the narrative and leaves the purported key event, a crime of passion, with little life of its own. The result is a well-made film that will probably have some value for Beat tragics but leave most audiences underwhelmed.

I suspect that had the whole Beat thing been left out and the film been made as a straight period drama that it would have been a lot better. First-time feature film director and co-writer John Krokidas does a solid job technically but his film never springs into life, the persistently downbeat Dead Poets Society tenor never cohering into an emotional affect . Ben Foster does a good Burroughs imitation but Jack Huston makes little impact as Kerouac.  Daniel Radcliffe’s characteristic earnestness suits the somewhat nerdy Ginsberg but the casting is still difficult to accept. Perhaps because he did not have to carry the burden of future fame Dane DeHaan’s Lucien Carr is the only really compelling character. DeHaan makes palpable the charismatic arrogance and conflicted vulnerablility of the troubled young man who captured Ginsberg’s heart (and to whom the poet dedicated the first edition of “Howl”).  And, oh yes, there is a murder in there, but don’t expect it to feature large.


 

 

back

Want more about this film?

search youtube  search wikipedia  

Want something different?

random vintage best worst