![]() ![]() Lucien uses his moody charisma to pit David against Allen while never quite acknowledging his true feelings for either.Īs their relationship deepens, Allen and Lucien realize they both share emotionally troubled pasts and a passion for poetry. David apparently followed Lucien to New York, and now works as a janitor despite his showy intellectual pretensions. Hall), an older hanger-on who clearly resents Allen’s position as Lucien’s new sidekick. With his louche charm and androgynous blond beauty, Lucien is an object of fascination for shy, unsophisticated Allen, and soon he is drawn into Lucien’s hard-drinking, reefer-smoking, jazz-clubbing circle of friends, including WILLIAM BURROUGHS (Ben Foster), the dissolute scion of a wealthy family, and DAVID KAMMERER (Michael C. When Allen is accepted into Columbia, his father LOUIS (David Cross), a working-class poet, urges him to leave his emotionally ill mother NAOMI (Jennifer Jason Leigh) behind and head to New York to go pursue his own creative dreams.Īt Columbia, Allen finds stuffy tradition clashing with daringly modern ideas and attitudes-embodied by LUCIEN CARR (Dane DeHaan), whom he first encounters shouting a scandalous passage from Henry Miller atop a library study table. Krokidas' drama doesn't follow these young artists for much time, but it does offer a fascinating take on the bizarrely interconnected lives of the Beats.KILL YOUR DARLINGS is based on true events and characters.įor dutiful son ALLEN GINSBERG (Daniel Radcliffe), Columbia University is Mecca-a portal to art, intellect, culture, and freedom-everything hometown Patterson, New Jersey is not. ![]() Foster is fabulous as the perpetually high Burroughs, and Hall and Huston are memorable in their small but pivotal roles as Carr's obsessive friend-or-foe Kammerer and the handsome and bisexual Kerouac, respectively. The actors, as with the young men they portray, are wonderful contrasts: Radcliffe's Ginsberg a manic bundle of frenetic (drug-fueled) artistic energy and DeHaan the kind of actor who says so much with his eyes and the subtlest of gestures. Ginsberg is ever the outsider: a Jewish kid from Paterson, New Jersey, with no money and not much personal experience except for a mentally ill mother. Radcliffe does well as a foil to DeHaan's well-heeled WASPiness. A thinker and innovator and provocateur, yes, but as the movie reveals, he wasn't an artist. DeHaan is perfectly cast as golden-haired, golden-bred Midwesterner Carr, who despite being the initial glue between his Columbia classmate Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs, wasn't really a writer himself. ![]() The film depicts them just as they were meeting and starting to develop their New Vision of literature and the arts. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.įilmmaker John Krokidas delivers an impressive feature debut with this well-acted exploration of the young Beats, before On the Road, before Howl. ![]() Mature high-schoolers who do see it will learn more about the Beat Poets, how they met, what they believed, and how interconnected their lives were both intellectually and romantically. Graphic sex and substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes) are all heavily referenced or visible throughout the movie, as is strong language ("f-k," "a-hole," derogatory terms for Jewish people) and a murder that's shown with additional details throughout the movie. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac with Lucien Carr, who killed an older man who may or may not have been his lover. It's a candid docudrama depicting the early friendship between Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg, William S. But this is not an appropriate movie for young teen fans of The Boy Who Lived. Parents need to know that Kill Your Darlings could potentially appeal to hardcore Harry Potter fans eager to see anything star Daniel Radcliffe does. ![]()
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