The story is somewhat specialised but as films about writers go, especially the Beats, this is one of the best, an intoxicating, absorbing and handsome exploration of what it really means to be inspired. Radcliffe is very good as the young Ginsberg, perfectly capturing his innocence and sense of adventure, while Ben Foster makes a convincing Burroughs. It is intellectual (rather than homosexual) awakening that director John Krokidas chooses as the crux of his excellent film: the dreams of youth, and the chance meeting of three seminal writers who would feed and expand upon each other’s ideas. Meanwhile, Carr is feeling increasingly smothered by the “old man”, and his fuse is soon to blow. To us, Kammerer’s intentions are clearly sexual, but the young Ginsberg - somewhat sheltered as a teenager, on account of having a schizophrenic mother to care for - takes some time to catch Hall), an older man in his early thirties, who pursues Carr around the country. Enrolling at Columbia University he meets the true antihero of the piece - Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), an intense, anarchic fellow student, who forces Ginsberg to question everything his bourgeois education has taught him.Ĭarr, then 19, is perhaps the prototype for Ginsberg’s “angel-headed hipsters”, a candle that burns so brightly it attracts a moth in the shape of David Kammerer (Michael C. Though he will later write a eulogy for the lowlifes, addicts and hustlers that enter his life (in the poem Howl), Ginsberg at this point is a middle-class bohemian, the son of well-known poet Louis Ginsberg, and far from rebellious. The nominal star of the film is Daniel Radcliffe, who, as the poet Ginsberg, is our entry point into this world.

Burroughs, was in some ways the Big Bang of the movement, bringing the three together and finally flinging them out on their individual journeys. The event, which usually forms a seemingly incidental but actually rather vital part of the preamble in the biographies of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Without it, the group of writers known as the Beat Generation may never have had the impact they did on the world of letters. But…the people behind “Kill Your Darlings” have, intentionally or not, brilliantly pointed out that earlier film’s flaws by not repeating themselves.”.In the literary world, the murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr in 1944 is as close as you get to an origins tale. Ive heard the strange madness long growing in. Allen Ginsberg : reading his poem Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. At Columbia University in 1944, poet Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) meets Lucien Carr (DeHaan), who has passionate views on art and life. They only circle back and return to you./They become part of who you are.

“a well-formulated and clever film that never comes across too academic or conceited”Īnd here’s Alonso Duralde, on-line, in The Wrap – “You’d be forgiven if sitting through last year’s “ On The Road” made you gun-shy about another Beat Generation movie. Allen Ginsberg : Some things, once youve loved them, become yours forever./And if you try to let them go. Jack Hill (reviewing it last week for the London Film Festival) Here’s three more early-bird reviews (we featured three reviews in our regular “round-up” last Friday).Įrica Abeel for Film Journal International – (Kill Your Darlings is) “Far and away the best film to date about the Beats, John Krokidas’ riveting account of Allen Ginsberg’s Columbia College days blows the lid off a sensational real-life murder”

(Catch a glimpse, a fleeting glimpse, too, of Jack Huston in the role of the young Jack Kerouac) Here’s the fourth (and final?) clip released by Sony Pictures Classics – Allen ( Daniel Radcliffe) reciting some of his early youthful verses to an entranced Lucien Carr ( Dane DeHaan). There are two great cinematic jokes in the new film Kill Your Darlings, two sly references to the dilemma of self-consciousness that this movie about the Beat Generation struggles to overcome. John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings opens in the US this week (this coming Wednesday, in fact).

Allen ginsberg kill your darlings