Kill Your Darlings

Plot synopsis:
As a young man in the 1940s, poet Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) wins a place at Columbia University in New York City. He arrives as a very inexperienced freshman, but soon runs into Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who is very anti-establishment and rowdy.
After a while, Ginsberg discovers that Carr only manages to stay at Columbia thanks to a somewhat older man, a professor, David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), who writes all of his term papers for him, and has a predatory relationship with Carr. It appears that Kammerer is still in love with Carr, and is revealed to be pressuring Carr for sexual favors, in exchange for assuring that he cannot be expelled.
Ginsberg soon meets, through Carr, William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster), already far into drug experimentation. The writer Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), who was a sailor at that time and expelled from Columbia, also meets and spends time with them. Carr eventually tells Kammerer he is done with him, and recruits Ginsberg (who has a crush on him) to write his term papers instead. After a while, Kerouac and Carr attempt to run off and join the merchant marine together, hoping to go to Paris.
There is a confrontation between Carr and Kammerer, during which Kammerer is killed by stabbing (and perhaps also by drowning). Carr is arrested, and asks Ginsberg to write his deposition for him. Ginsberg is at first reluctant to help the unstable Carr, but after digging up more crucial evidence on Kammerer and his past relationship, he writes a piece entitled "The Night in Question". The piece describes a more emotional event, in which Carr kills Kammerer who outright tells him to after being threatened with the knife, devastated by this final rejection. Carr rejects the "fictional" story, and begs a determined Ginsberg not to reveal it to anybody, afraid that it will ruin him in the ensuing trial.
We learn from Carr's mother that Kammerer was the first person to seduce Carr, when he was much younger and lived in Chicago. After the trial we find out that Carr testified that the attack took place only because Kammerer was a sexual predator, and that Carr killed him in self-defense. Carr is not convicted of murder and receives only a short sentence for manslaughter.
Ginsberg then submits "The Night in Question" as his final term paper. On the basis of that shocking piece of prose, Ginsberg is faced with possible expulsion from Columbia. Either he must be expelled or he must embrace establishment values. He chooses the former, but is forced to leave his typescript behind. A week or two later he receives the typescript in the mail with an encouraging letter from his professor telling him to pursue his writing.

Tags: murder

Review:
But John Krokidas' debut feature film, which takes as its subjects the American poets of the revolutionary Beat Generation, fits in so much more, as it explores a haunting search for life and legacy that teeters close to the edge of death.Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) arrives at Columbia University keen to start a life away from the shadow of his famous dad, poet Louis Ginsberg (David Cross), and his mentally unstable mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
It's only when Allen recites a poem - on a moonlit night, on a stolen boat - that Lucien is comprehensively struck by his genius, as are we.When the film spins into darker, more murderous territory, it moves from coming-of-age story to crime thriller - a genre shift that, oddly, works quite well within the universe established by Krokidas, as it allows Allen to contemplate the darker, less palatable side of Lucien's volatile personality.
David's tragic obsession with Lucien - one that the film suggests Allen could have shared - finally kicks off a tragic twist of events that unfold in a very particular way in Kill Your Darlings.
Arguably, Allen ends up in an emotional place in the film that doesn't quite sit right with what actually transpired in real life, as told to us by a series of title cards just before the end credits.Less controversial is the young cast, all of whom do first-rate work in disentangling the complex web of relationships that exists amongst these characters.
John Krokidas' film explores the early life of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), and how he came into contact with Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), and William Burroughs (Ben Foster).
As the action progresses, however, so the film's priorities become diluted; rather than focusing on the genesis of the Beats, the action concentrates instead on the complex love-triangle involving Lucien, Allen and David Kammerer (Michael C.
This isn't it.Kill Your Darlings (2013) is a biographical drama about the early adult years of the beat generation stalwarts Allen Ginsburg (1926-97), Jack Kerouac (1922-69), and William Burroughs (1914-97).
Burroughs was a prolific author ("Junkie", "Naked Lunch") whose themes of death, drugs, and homosexuality can be seen in their beginning phases in this film.)The whole idea of the beat generation was that if you could dismantle the structure of communication and still have some worth, then anything was up for grabs.
And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet."I knew nothing about Kill Your Darlings going into this movie (which means I basically don't know anything about modern American literature because apparently these guys were famous poets that influenced their generation during the 50's with their literary work).
This film only focuses on the early stages of their lives, but it shows how these artists came to know each other and how Lucien Carr was the most influential figure in their formation.The screenplay was co-written by director John Krokidas and Austin Bunn focusing on the early stages of Alan Ginsberg's (Daniel Radcliffe) life as he began studying at Columbia University which shaped his philosophical views on life.
The turning point in his life was when he met his classmate, Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) who taught him to question the orthodox methods of the school and introduced him to other future icons of the Beat generation: William S.
However, this film examines Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) before he began his literary revolution and the character is one I found easy to fall in love with.
Radcliffe portrays Ginsberg - with the aid of new comer writer and director John Korkidas - with a playful naive innocence as he approaches love and friendship at Columbia and his relationship between Carr (Dane DeHaan) is believable from the moment you see them in the same scene.
Jack Huston and Ben Foster give amazing performances despite their lack of character development throughout the film but they never took all of the attention either which I especially enjoyed as it was never a film about just Ginsberg or a film about Kerouac alone as it was about all of the beat writers and the event that begun their revolution as inspirational writers.
The film itself is a work that sometimes trades in the grainy for flashy; rupturing not only the pattern that the authors were trying to break, but the whole tone of the film as well.If I pitched you a story about the Beat generation led by Harry Potter, the new Harry Osborne, a guy from X-Men and the guy from Boardwalk Empire with half his face missing, I'm sure the reaction would be pretty great.
Unfortunately for audiences, the subject matter submits to a truly unauthentic, lack lustre festival formula and abandons creativeness and a unique vision for a familiar narrative that disregards great historical figures, making them caricatures within a lame murder/mystery genre film.Daniel Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg, one of the most famous and recognizable poets in the American culture.
With the rich historical and cultural imprint of these feisty literary pioneers, so much of the busy murder antics is clearly overshadowing the brilliant opportunity to showcase the likes of Carr, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac.Mixing the potential monologue moments of Weir's 1989 Dead Poets Society with the tone and ambiance of Salle's 2004 masterpiece The Motorcycle Diaries, Kill Your Darlings becomes a self- inflicted suicide of a film with a tantalizing and promising narrative.
However, while most of the top-billed cast is ravishing, and supporting cast is spot on, the film feels drowned in the water with average narrative clichés weighing it down.While the antics of the underbelly of the New York Greenwich Village scene have been explored, battered, bruised and forever changed by the provocative and decadent Beat Movement, Kill Your Darlings remains a tame snippet of the life of these amazing authors and thinkers.
Cast with a group of very fine actors and accompanied with musical director Nico Muhly's sensitive score that includes the references to Brahms symphonies and trios and transcriptions of themes along with terrific excerpts from Harlem's jazz scene (courtesy of Dawn Newman as a jazz singer), this film is successful on many levels, not the least of which is the reminder of the permanent impact on American literature and sociology imprinted by the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs.
The very sensitive opening sequence, appreciated only at film's end, sets the dark tone of the film and opens the window to understanding the Beats (also called "the Libertine Circle" by Ginsberg).The time is the mid 1940s and Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliff) is an English major in Columbia University, assigned to be the roommate of Lucien 'Make me cry or make me horny' Carr (Dane DeHann) who awakens Ginsberg's rebellious self and introduces him to the work of Rimbaud.
Kill Your Darlings is labelled biopic and drama but the movie fails on both aspects.First, the scenario only glances over the emergence of the Beat Generation and its three founding authors : for the literature neophytes — a fortiori non-American persons — the movie doesn't teach anything about that movement, its roots, its consequences, and the importance of the stakes is not palpable at all.The scenario tries in parallel to develop a drama/thriller that turns out to be not much convincing, there was much better to do with this storyline about homosexuality at an intolerant time.The cast, though badly directed, is extremely bland and only Daniel Radcliffe arouses any emotion (which is a desire to murder).All in all, there is nothing to draw from this movie one will make forget as soon as finished..
No, this is not a 'film'.The writing and acting are perfectly appropriate for the young kids who think they have discovered the angst of life like no one ever has before them.This is a very shallow depiction of the self-aggrandizement that the Beats built their 'revolution' on.
There is no shortage of compelling story lines involving the writers who led this revolution; Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, or William S.
But rather than focusing the 90 minutes of screen time on developing anything meaningful about the literary movement, the murder, the murderer, or the victim, we're instead shown snapshots of those things, plus Allen's mentally disturbed mother, Lucien's overly involved mother, a prank they commit at the library on the Columbia University campus, Jack Kerouac's complicated personal life, university stuff, other stuff, and then more stuff.
I was iffy on watching this since I am not into poetry and it seem like a film deal with era I don't really connect with, But I am wrong when Allen ( Daniel Radcliffe) smile at Lac (Dane) performance of a obscure poem along gesture in library during Allen's freshman tour to his new school.Fun and poem are flattering witty and beautiful.
John Krokidas's "Kill Your Darlings" looks as Ginsberg's college years, where he met the other people who formed the Beat Generation.
But it simply follows a young freshman, Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), as he enters a poet literary movement following the few concepts of sex, drugs, alcohol and murder.By this point you are surely thinking - 'I don't like poetry and I have never heard of these poets!' - but that is okay, as the film is so much more than that.
"Kill Your Darlings" is the story of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) as he arrives at college and is ushered into a new generation of writers.
Kill Your Darlings is oddly bloodless and bland, which is something of an irony given that it ends with the stabbing and drowning of one of the characters.Part of the problem for John Krokidas is that one of the central elements of his piece, the Beat Generation and its various protagonists - including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs - are of rather less consequence in the second decade of 21st century than many, not least the Beat Generation, would like.
"She smells of imported sophistication and domestic cigarettes." Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan)In Kill Your Darlings, Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) is the central character in a drama based on an actual incident that shows less of the beat poet's greatness as an artist and more about his nascent gay passions.
So, too, does this film show the other side of literary glamour.Nevertheless director John Krokidas and writer Austin Bunn evoke the tumultuous era of the early 1940's when the world collaborated in defeating the Nazis and young artists Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Ginsberg were preparing to overthrow the moribund traditions of Victorian literature to create a hip-lit that made Ginsberg a god of mid-twentieth century letters.While I would have liked more about Ginsberg and Kerouac as writers, Kill Your Darlings is nothing if not romantic queer lit of a high order.
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.
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.
The Beat Generation's Iconic Trio of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs are Featured in this Film but Predominantly, for some less than Artistic, Informative and Inconceivable Idea its Focus is Lucien Carr.
Suddenly characters start to show motivations and characteristics that weren't previously established.The film focuses on Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, but somewhere in between William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac are thrown in, and the viewers are supposed to react to them based on their knowledge on the people they are based on.Daniel Radcliffe's performance is as wooden as his Harry Potter's, at least his American accent is decent.
College professor David Kammerer was the buzzkill/albatross of the Beat Generation, that small group of bohemian writers who, during the 1940's, began what would change literature while incipiently shaping the pivotal hippie era and, well, the rest is history Kammerer's adoration for young pretty boy Lucien Carr, and the murder that resulted, is covered in several Jack Kerouac novels including VANITY OF DOLUOZ, DESOLATION ANGELS and even his first venture, TOWN AND THE CITY But the main character is poet Allen Ginsberg, equal to Jack in the Beat template along with the strange, mythical William Burroughs Young HARRY POTTER icon Daniel Radcliffe plays Ginsberg with the kind of sympathetic pathos begging for a transformation: in this case, drug-use leading to writing leading to homosexuality But we're skipping ahead When Allen first escapes his crazy mother and becomes a Columbia University freshman, he's somewhat of an empty canvas Enter Dane DeHaan as Lucian Carr, an elfin, blond-haired/blue-eyed contemplating beatnik before there was such a thing Despite being the poster child for cerebral pretentiousness, Carr becomes an instigative mentor to Ginsberg The more interesting scenes have the duo clashing with the uptight status quo while discovering drugs, jazz and planning a foundational "New Vision" to put the older poets (ala Ogden Nash) to rest And, like the sound of an orchestra tuning, there's only an eerie squeezebox of intention sans the necessary talent to progress their (at that point) lofty ideals Legendary author Jack Kerouac, whose ON THE ROAD – along with Ginsberg's epic poem HOWL – ignited the Beat Generation, is a third-fiddle womanizer and the least important here Meanwhile, a lanky Burroughs mumbles through experimental drug trips and the character that should have been more prominent is Kammerer himself, the bearded college professor played by DEXTER star Michael C.
treated like a special guest star throughout.What's ironic is the Kammerer/Carr case slowed down the spontaneity of the Kerouac novels, and amounts to little here The real purpose of KILL YOUR DARLINGS is Carr's hypocrisy countered by Ginsberg's realization as a homosexual morphing into a significant generational spokesman And in that, Radcliffe's edgy demeanor exceeds a visually pleasing but ultimately monotone story, rushing through what's really important: the collaborating genius between the three primary BeatsInstead we're left with a cinematic version of Ginsberg and Carr's grandiloquent NEW VISION A potential spark without any real burn..
A dazzling character piece centers around a brutal murder case which implicates several future literature big shots of the beat generation, Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is the freshman of Columbia University, he encounters a fellow student Lucien Carr (DeHaan), who brings him into a world of unorthodoxy and defiance against the rules and conformism, and he also meets the young Jack Kerouac (Huston) and William Burroughs (Foster).
The main character in this movie is Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), but the movie revolved around Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan).
I would honestly argue though, the one who comes out best in the film is Dane DeHaan, for reasons listed below.Characters & StoryA college bound Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) we meet as a mousy, awkward, but slightly confidant young man thanks to his father's work being prominent.
With their bromance, though sort of love story, we see what seems to be your usual little bud blossom, and watching this film really helps me see Radcliffe as more than Harry Potter, and really makes it so that it is simply a role he did, and not the total of his existence/ talents.As for everyone else, DeHaan as Lucien embodied an almost seductive style which easily could make even a straight man curious.
They are all going to be the writers and poets of that post war lost generation that will beat their guilt out of their minds and beat us down into our own guilt.We all know Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Lucien Carr.
But the film also contains some easy symbolism like showing William Burroughs shooting himself with morphine, Allen Ginsberg being sexually penetrated by some unknown outsider he had accidentally picked in the street, and Lucien Carr repeatedly stabbing David Kammerer.
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.
{8.5 stars} First off, I'm sure that there are discrepancies between this film and the real story of the Columbia University love-triangle of Allen Ginsburg, Lucien Carr, and David Kammerer.
But first we are introduced to the very young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) who enrols in college where he meets the very young Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and eventually Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston).
But if you decide to make a movie about Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, do you really need to focus on a gloomy murder story that we have seen so many times before with the only difference being that these characters incidentally have changed the literary landscape of the second half of the twentieth century?
Over the past few years, the Beat Generation that spawned writers and poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac has returned to cinema screens in documentaries ('William S.
First time feature filmmaker John Krokidas tackles this story and knocks it out of the park with his jazzy, drug-induced opus called 'Kill Your Darlings'.This film shows the very beginning of the Beat Generation, including the friendships and influences that shaped these iconic writers that we study today.
'Kill Your Darlings' starts out almost like a thriller in the vein of 'Se7en', with Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) in a jail cell, talking to his supposed friend who has just murdered somebody.
This story is a historical drama concerning the life of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) and his time at Columbia University.