'KILL YOUR DARLINGS'
A dead body floats on the Hudson. Then, through the darkness, you are propelled into Kill Your Darlings, the words big and bold and all caps—KILL YOUR DARLINGS—the big-screen directorial début of John Krokidas. The film that follows examines, with the bracing audacity of its brash opening, how one death shaped the Beat Generation during their formative years at stuffy old Columbia University.
At least, that’s what the liner notes say. In reality, Kill Your Darlings is a lot of movies, most of them successful. There is the love story of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), the heart of the film and of the movement, and Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), the social catalyst Ginsberg needed to meet Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster). But there is also the whodunnit murder and legal drama surrounding Carr’s murder of David Kammerer, an older admirer. Then there’s the story of Ginsberg’s family and of his finding his voice. And the buddy-cop movie of the Beats coming together and tearing up Forties New York.
There are a lot of moving parts, partly due to the fact that this is Krokidas’ first film, but also because his cast gives him so much to work with. Kill Your Darlings is bursting with vibrancy, even despite a ten-year production fraught with complications. The film pulses with a sensuous energy, passions lit up not just by sex but also by young men on the verge of literary epiphany. Krokidas has compared Kill Your Darlings to superhero origin stories. It’s apt, even if these superpowers have to do with the ability to write while under the influence and—somehow—not get expelled even when breaking into the library and breaking curfew.
Kill Your Darlings captures that antic spirit of joy, but there are also some slips. The film contains adequate but unnecessary montages of drug-fueled writing sprees and jazz-club singers singin’ and sweatin’. The Beats were influenced by jazz, but these images aren’t particularly new or illuminating. Show us, instead, the Beats discussing their “New Vision” or sharing a beer, or crashing at Kerouac’s place while he fights with Edie Parker (Elizabeth Olsen). The film fortunately and frustratingly contains both sides. Those brief stereotypes are met with rewarding interpretations of early conversations between Kerouac, Carr, Ginsberg, and Burroughs.
Daniel Radcliffe, as Ginsberg, shows tremendous grace under the fire. As the narrative pinwheel of the film’s varied tangents, he must show the promise that the elder Ginsberg, he of “Howl” and “Kaddish,” would fulfill. Radcliffe misses some of the intellectual fire and oddball eccentricity that characterized Ginsberg. Instead, his Ginsberg is more wide-eyed, more lovesick, more inquisitive. Kill Your Darling’s takes some dramatic liberties with history (which might explain its posthumous release and post-production drama). DeHaan, as Carr, is beautiful glue. His story, and his murder of Kammerer, dominates the second half of the film. It becomes less about the Beats and more about Ginsberg and Carr, a good thing, since it gives us more of DeHaan, but it loses sight of the film’s promise—namely, how the Beats became the Beats.
The supporting cast is spot-on. Ben Foster, as Burroughs, is deep-throated and nutty without being nuts. Jack Huston, as a Falstaffian Kerouac, helps slap some of the pretentiousness out of his cohorts. Even David Cross, as Ginsberg’s poet-father Louis, is subtle and nuanced.
Kill Your Darlings is not a perfect movie, but its little mistakes help reinforce the passion and power of the moment in time it captures. It is a literally beautiful film, shot in just twenty-four days, but with a vibrant palette of reds, browns, and blues. It is dusted with soft moments (a first kiss), wild abandon (a first blow job), and blooming brilliance (a first poem). It is very much a love letter, nearly excellent, to a time when the right letters in the right order meant everything.
Kill Your Darlings is out now from Sony Pictures Classics.
Zachary Sniderman is a journalist based out of New York City.
