Review of Kill Your Darlings (2013) by Cl 9 — 16 Feb 2015

So as surefire way in which to shrug off his clean-cut Harry Potter image, Daniel Radcliffe could do no better than portray the early life of Allen Ginsberg and he does it very well. At the time, Ginsberg was consuming vast amounts of drugs and being willingly lead astray by the the likes of William S.

Burroughs and Jack Kerouac and together, they went on to become central figures of the Beat Generation of artists. Kill Your Darlings, explores the relationship between Ginsberg and Lucien Carr after they meet at university.

Carr is central (at least if the movie is to be believed) to Ginsberg's development as a poet and also his decent into a drug-fuelled and destructive period of his life. The relationship between the two is further complicated by Carr's controlling and obsessive lover, David Kammerer.

Car himself, comes over as a deeply flawed and manipulative man, using his looks and personality to get what he wants. I confess to not knowing enough about any of these individuals to be able to comment on the accuracy, but it certainly makes for fascinating and compelling viewing.

John Krokidas shows us the effects the massive drug binges with a series of filmic techniques that are suitably disjointed and make for interesting interludes. The awful violence that occurs and is pivotal to the plot, is well flagged and comes as no real surprise but is still upsetting when it is shown.

I wouldn't say that this is an easy film and I'd go as far as to say that the characters, though interesting, are quite repellent, with very few virtues. The fact that so many of them went on to achieve such literary greatness makes this a story worthy of being told and all involved are to be congratulated for their efforts.

The resulting movie is very good.