Kill Your Darlings

Film (2013)

With Daniel Radcliffe (Allen Ginsberg), Dane DeHaan (Lucien Carr), Michael C. Hall (David Kammerer), Jack Huston (Jack Kerouac), Ben Foster (William Burroughs), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Naomi Ginsberg), David Cross (Louis Ginsberg), Elizabeth Olsen (Edie Parker), Kyra Sedgwick (Marian Carr), Erin Darke (Gwendolyn), David Rasche (Dean), John Cullum (Professor Steeves)

Son of a poet father and a mentally ill mother, Allen Ginsberg, a sweet and innocent young man from Paterson, NJ enters Columbia University and falls under the sway of several intense and iconoclastic characters, some of whom became great writers as well. That tribe includes Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, but the focus of the drama is upon Lucien Carr, a charming and attractive young man whose affiliation with the somewhat older David Kammerer becomes the vehicle of considerable anguish.

Whoever thought Allen Ginsberg’s life could be so interesting? It is not only interesting, as depicted in this excellent film, but suspenseful as well.

This coming of age story of the young poet, beautifully and sensitively interpreted by Daniel Radcliffe (of Harry Potter fame), is engaging and direct without being crass. Certainly, there is plenty of wild stuff that goes on, but the film’s, and Radcliffe’s, portrait is not at all lurid.

What a great dramatization of recent literary history this is! Superbly written, directed and acted, Kill Your Darlings gives a clear view into the world of the early beat poets and does it with subtlety as well as drama.

Radcliffe really does an amazing job as Ginsberg. For someone who made his way through childhood as a film star in the most popular fantasy series of all time, Radcliffe has evolved, in early adulthood, as a serious stage and film actor of considerable range. His treatment of Ginsberg is compelling and thoughtful and though one might be easily swayed to see his portrayal shaded by his Harry Potter persona, that, in fact, does not at all intervene.

Michael C. Hall, particularly known to television viewers for his appearances on the long-running series Six Feet Under (2001-2005) and Dexter (2006-2013), does a highly commendable job here as the sex-obsessed David Kammerer. He is creepy, but not histrionically so, and Hall’s complex characterization enables one to feel compassion for him as a gay man in an era which did not publicly accept homosexuality.

Dane DeHaan, as Lucien Carr, the young Adonis whose iconoclastic behavior inspires Ginsberg towards artistic rebellion and whose sexuality tempts him, is appropriately brooding and magnetic.

Jennifer Jason Leigh does a striking turn as Naomi Ginsberg, Allen’s mentally ill mother, perhaps her best performance I have seen.

It is fun to see John Cullum, who had a longstanding role on the TV series Northern Exposure (1990-1995), as one of Ginsberg’s English professors.

“Kill Your Darlings” is a phrase typically invoked in writers’ circles as an editorial recommendation to excise the portions of text to which one is unduly attached. Here, the title provides a strong and interesting double entendre, suggesting the eroticism and murderous impulses that pervade the world in which Ginsberg, Carr, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and David Kammerer move.

Though this film, traveling quickly through art house cinemas, may go under the radar, it is extremely worth pursuing. It is a notably well done treatment of a most interesting circle of artists, beautifully executed and not in the least bit hokey.

– BADMan