Review of Kill Your Darlings (2013) by Michael H — 24 Nov 2013

I feel out here on a limb not much liking this movie. I so wanted to. I looked forward to seeing it for what feels like two years. But it's kind of an enormous meh. Partly, it's because I didn't believe any of the characters with the exceptions of DeHaan as Lucien Carr and Leigh as Ginsberg's mother (indeed she is hardly recognizable so completely does she inhabit her character).

This was a film cast for prettiness and/or popularity. Michael C. Hall. I know there are many who adore him, but I've never liked any character he's played, and I didn't like him in this. Radcliffe looks and sounds nothing like the poet he plays.

Then there is the more important matter of what the film has to say about the relationships it depicts. I was left feeling queasy about mixed signals. On the one hand I think it wants to be hip and liberal.

But on the other? It's kind of regressive. Self-hating gays and a predatory drama that ends in murder. Of course, the murder is a fact. But the film goes to some length to let Carr off the hook. How the film imagines Carr's death, when nobody but Carr knows what happened, has a vibe of blame the victim.

Still, any movie where Radcliffe throws his legs into the air can't be all bad.