Before Jack Kerouac would go on his American road trip and write his seminal work “On The Road”, and before famed poet Allen Ginsberg became synonymous for the best minds of a generation lost, the men who were to create a movement still talked about 60 years later had a beginning at Columbia University in 1943. That story is finally being told on film, in John Krokidas’ outstanding directorial debut “Kill Your Darlings”, playing as part of the 2013 London Film Festival.
“Kill Your Darlings” begins at the end. Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) is behind bars and in conversation with Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe). It appears Ginsberg has written Carr’s deposition for a crime that he has been accused of committing, and Carr is not happy. Then we’re back in 1943 and at Ginsberg’s home in New Jersey where he lives with his unstable mother and a father who has given up on his wife.
Ginsberg is a young, gay Jewish writer who enrolls at Columbia University but finds a much different education when he meets Carr, a young man with a troubled past and a tortured relationship with an older ex-professor David Kammerer (David C. Hall). “Tell them Lucien Carr is innocent!” Carr shouts as he is chased out of the library for reading restricted material out loud, also serving as Ginsberg’s first glimpse of the magnetic figure. A shadowy foretelling to a later denial of guilt, Carr and Ginsberg soon meet again when Ginsberg discovers him playing Brahms.
This is DeHaan and Radcliffe’s film, their portrayal of these brilliant young minds is incredible to watch, with the chemistry between the two tangible from their first glance. Radcliffe’s most impressive role to date, he delves deep into the character of Ginsberg, never playing him as a ready-made icon, nor letting him become a caricature. DeHaan, one of the most talented actors working in Hollywood, takes Carr, a sexually repressed man who lives his life searching for people to write his ideas of a “New Vision” down, and depicts him with vulnerability and honesty, bringing to light a man who had for so long remained in the shadows of the Beat history.
Beat films are full of cliches but those cliches exist because it’s the way the audience love to see these men. “There is no creation without imitation,” says Ginsberg’s English professor early on, and Krokidas seems aware of this, with the cliche hallucinogenic interludes, moments of explicit sex and scenes of crazed young men taking drugs and ‘writing writing writing’ well-placed throughout the film, moving the story along and helping to cement these relationships.
The script allows for the two side characters of Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster) to remain supporting yet essential, pivotal pieces in the creation of a movement. Huston in particular brings the young, athletic Kerouac’s enthusiasm for learning and life to the screen. Elizabeth Olsen is woefully underused here as Kerouac’s girlfriend Edie Parker, though at times their side story felt like a requirement only so there could be at least one young actress in the film – Parker may have been a catalyst for Kerouac’s story but was an unnecessary inclusion for this tale.
“Kill Your Darlings” may begin at the end but it’s how Krokidas, Radcliffe and DeHaan get us back there that counts, taking a journey that offers questions and answers, but never assumes the genius that was to come.
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