Review of Kill Your Darlings (2013) by Steve P — 20 Dec 2013

That the protagonists of what will be remembered as the Beat generation were all gathered at some point under the roof of the Columbia University in New York, while the WWII was blazing around Europe, is stuff screenwriters dreams are made of. But the temptation of turning literary personalities in caricatures is always around the corner and this John Krokidasâ(TM) directorial debut falls flat at the beginning, looking more like a frisky version of the Dead Poet Society, with eyebrow-raising performances of kids jumping on the tables of the library to declaim the obscene lines of Henry Millerâ(TM)s Tropic or sitting naked at their desk to type furiously the verses that will start the revolution.

The film takes off when the plot gets a homosexual obsession twist that echoes the Rimbaud/Verlaine's ebullient romance and the protagonists stumble into a murder. Bipolar mothers, suicidal teens, burning ambitions and unrequited lovers are all thrown in the blender and the result is certainly explosive.

While Jack Hustonâ(TM)s Jack Kerouac has the charm of the lads' lad and Ben Foster gives a lysergic and tormented performance as The Howl 's author William Borrough, it is Jennifer Jason Leigh who steals the scene as the troubled mother of the fledging poet Allen Ginsberg; we donâ(TM)t see much of her but she doesnâ(TM)t waste time either and shows her slashed wrists in the very first scene. She reappears again towards the end of the film, in the corridor of a mental hospital, the hair magnificently uncombed and grey, her gaze transfixed by a hardly-won internal bliss.

It is evident that Daniel Radcliffe, here in the leading role of the young Allen Ginsberg, is trying hard to move on from his Harry Potter image and swaps the uncool round glasses for hipster-ish specs and a side-parted hairdo that make him look cute and awkward, as the role requires, especially when he kisses for the first time his object of desire Lucien Carr, the hot mess played by Dane DeHaan,: we saw thousands of kisses on screen, even gay, but this does feel like YOUR first kiss.

The sentimental education of Ginsberg continues perilously till the casual encounter in a sleazy men-only bar. In The Penetrated Male, Jonathan Kemp argues that the man who is the receptor in a homosexual intercourse doesnâ(TM)t have to be necessarily seen as passive and feminine, as previously portrayed by the straight and queer culture: here Daniel proves the point and after having draped his body on the cheap sheets of a furnished bedsit, waiting passively for what has to come, has a sudden change of mind and turns around to look in the eye of his partner to face the pain â" and the pleasure - that his own desire has drawn upon him. It â~s a hard to watch moment, poignantly mirrored by the stabbing scene of his rival, Lucienâ(TM)s mentor and former lover, David Kammarer (here played by Dexter actor Michael C Hal); he too doesnâ(TM)t accept his role of loveâ(TM)s fool, but after having floundered pathetically after his young pupil and turned into a mischievous villain, eventually meets his destiny with a courage that has failed him till now.

âYou who suffered find where love hides /Give Share Lose/Lest we die unbloomedâ?. As a coming-of-age story, this is pretty gruesome, but poetical indeed.