Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Who payed the critics

A Brilliant Conflict

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Beat poetry is a subject that I am not familiar with and I am not entirely sure it exist in the parts I am from, but it's definitely an interesting subject to illustrate on film."Kill Your Darlings" discusses a murder that occurred in the 40's involving several monumental names of literature from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac, who would later go on forming what's called the Beat Generation. The acting was on par with the theme of the film, Dane DeHaan and Daniel Radcliffe, in particular, doing a fantastic job. The film debates topics such as sexual repression, recognition, reputation and exploration. As with most artists, the members of the Beat Generation certainly had a tumultuous and troublesome lifestyle that is depicted in the movie through love triangles, extravagant parties and misdemeanors.The film's screenplay started off well, describing Ginsberg's freshman experience at college, meeting with DeHaan's character, Lucien Carr, and surely enough the first steps of beat poetry were about to begin. However halfway through the script looses focus and ultimately doesn't lead up to anything, leaving the viewer with not much factual information about the great poetry generation."Kill Your Darlings" had substantial background information that could have been put to more use while still being captivating to the audience.

image2.jpegViewed at Jameson Cinefest in Miskolc Hungary, September 2013, a modest festival in a secondary city that has now become the most important film festival in the country and growing steadily with unusual heads up programming. KYD, the debut feature by 29 year old director John Krokidas, is a dope fueled coming of age story of soon-to-be literary celebrities before they became notoriously well known which then turns into a more than routine crime thriller. The murder of a homosexual older man in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs during their college campus years at Columbia. With Dan Radcliffe as Ginsberg, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, and English actor Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and a cameo by Jennifer Jason Leigh (49) as Ginsberg's mentally ill Jewish mother. The ingredients for a fascinating film are all there but "Kill your Darlings" Is the kind of dismemorable title that can kill a picture before it starts. The packed auditorium where I saw it indicated a strong advance curiosity quotient reflecting the high level of literary awareness of Hungarian filmgoers, but it left me cold. While these were the literary icons of my own college days (I even met Ginsberg in person several times) and this is a period of high personal interest for me, I felt no sense of authenticity or real resonance with Theophrastus L WW II period. Above all the central Ginsberg portrayal was way off in my view and not at all true to life -- true, perhaps, to current screen life since the main actor, Daniel Radcliffe, (as Ginsberg) is an international celebrity because of his lead roles in the Harry Potter films,but painfully miscast hero. A little too canny for its own good this respectable first effort will only get a limited release because it is far more neo-intellectual than mainstream, and will probably disappear from view quickly. For the record the story deals with Ginsberg's short stay at Columbia University in 1944 where he meets his first important gay lover, the oh-so-hip Lucien Carr. Carr introduces him to his buddies future Beat Generation celebrities Jack Kerouac and William Boroughs, neither very believably portrayed, and then accidentally kills one of his other lovers, the middle aged David Kammerer, while trying to ward off undesired sexual advances. (Sample dialog: Carr: "I was a kid, and you dragged me into your perverted mess. Kammerer: "How can you say that? You know that's not true. I will never give up on us. Carr: "You're pathetic! ~ and stabs him with a pocket knife) Whike there are some references to the early writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac this picture deals mostly with the involvement of the future literary icons in this little known fait divers, which was briefly big news at the time, but was never referred to in their later writings. Nice try, better luck next time.😜

The film would be enjoyed by fans of the Beat Generation's poets and homosexuals who take their birth rights seriously, or both. I am a homosexual and I did enjoy this one tremendously. Not in so many films that homosexuality serves only as an undertone, despite some visualized images of homosexual lovemaking. Absolute love of freedom becomes the overriding theme of this bunch of homosexual artists. I think this film will get all of us closer to a natural treatment of the third sex. Homosexuals would be equaled to heterosexuals when their "issue" ceases to be an issue for the public at large. The film is not trying to tell the whole story of these artists. Just a very thin slice was chosen to be told, and what a slice it was. My country, Thailand, is still stuck with the 18th Century superhuman theory of politics. All moral codes are determined by how much you love and glorify the king. Nothing else really matters. Even a murder is construed by law as being better than libeling the king, his family members, and his men. So I understand how it feels to be so free, and be met with ultra-conservatism at times. Madness can come as a result of being free, but the lack of it would drive you insane. Quite a different of psychological episodes. I encourage you to watch this film and do more research about these characters. You will end up knowing a lot more about yourself.

This film is boring from the beginning to the end. Well, I confess I did not see him fully! I passed it forward several times because I couldn't take it. The sex scenes with Radcliff will hunt me forever. I guess I won't be able to look at him the same way as I used to do with harry potter. He grown up the worse way. The theme is deplorable. No way this argument could deliver a work of art (like you assume the 7th should be). In one word: presumption The worst movie i watched this year. Again I can't understand why I have to go on writing this review when all I want to say is: escape this one. Someone should have told me that!