X
- 2013
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 44 m
- 2013
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 44 m
Summary A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster).
Directed By: John Krokidas
Written By: Austin Bunn, John Krokidas
- 2013
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 44 m
- 2013
- R
- Sony Pictures Classics
- 1 h 44 m
Kill Your Darlings
65
6.6
Where to Watch
Summary A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster).
Directed By: John Krokidas
Written By: Austin Bunn, John Krokidas
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
65
58% Positive
21 Reviews
21 Reviews
36% Mixed
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
6% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
65
58% Positive
21 Reviews
21 Reviews
36% Mixed
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
6% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Mr. Krokidas deftly shows how the ambition to write is entangled with other impulses.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 83 User Ratings
6.6
61% Positive
51 Ratings
51 Ratings
28% Mixed
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
11% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 83 User Ratings
6.6
61% Positive
51 Ratings
51 Ratings
28% Mixed
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
11% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
this movie was beautiful and unique. loved the story, characters and setting. allen ginsberg is one of my loved poets
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Kill Your Darlings is a magnificent effort by first-time filmmaker John Krokidas. The movie is based on a true story set in 1944 when a young Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs all congregated together in New York City, and whose lives were forever changed when a mutual friend, Lucian Carr, killed an acquaintance of theirs. The project attracted one of the most acclaimed independent film casts of all time, featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ben Foster, Elizabeth Olsen, Jack Huston, and David Cross. The prevailing motif throughout the film focuses on the cyclical nature of art as well as life. With this in mind, Krokidas lays out a non-traditional plot structure that begins at the end of this true tale, jumps back in time, and as the movie unfolds, eventually circles back on itself. The final result is a showcase of great performances paired with an equally striking aesthetic. Krokidas’ unique blend of camera movement, sound design, graphics, and occasional distortion of time is a rarity among small-budget productions helmed by a debut filmmaker, making this gem that much more impressive.
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That Ginsberg is played by Daniel Radcliffe might come as a shock, but the shock wears off as the movie rolls on and you realize you’re in very good hands.
There’s a limber, freewheeling aspect to the storytelling that echoes the rule-breaking literary form of the Beat writers.
Unlike Walter Salles’s recent adaptation of On The Road, which embraced the Beat philosophy with a wide and credulous grin, Kill Your Darlings is inquisitive about the movement’s worth, and the genius of its characters is never assumed.
Far too conventional underneath all the trappings, you wish it would howl.
Kill Your Darlings presents a minor prelude to a major literary movement.
Daniel Radcliffe is one of his most mature and risky roles. The epoc sreenplay is interesting. Maybe not suitable for some tastes, however is a good choice in the name of curiosity.
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It’s no surprise that some of the most effective works of the Beatnik generation were born in the scuzzy halls of jazz bars; soaked with whiskey induced grammar, intoxicated with muddled philosophies, their pages bathed in the permanent smell of tobacco. Much like the work of Lewis Carroll, drugs, alcohol, and culture were catalysts towards the ideology of destroying the old and building the new. The movement itself was a rousing feat with great cultural ramifications. The film itself is a work that sometimes trades in the grainy for flashy; rupturing not only the pattern that the authors were trying to break, but the whole tone of the film as well.
If I pitched you a story about the Beat generation led by Harry Potter, the new Harry Osborne, a guy from X-Men and the guy from Boardwalk Empire with half his face missing, I’m sure the reaction would be pretty great. Unfortunately for audiences, the subject matter submits to a truly unauthentic, lack lustre festival formula and abandons creativeness and a unique vision for a familiar narrative that disregards great historical figures, making them caricatures within a lame murder/mystery genre film.
Daniel Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg, one of the most famous and recognizable poets in the American culture. Radcliffe continues to shed his ‘Hogwarts alumni’ image by taking risky, unconventional and edgy roles that all share in their seemingly controversial nature. Upon his acceptance and arrival into Columbia University, Ginsberg is in search of something offbeat. Ironically enough, Ginsberg is lured into the residency of Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), an intoxicated sociopath with an obsession for self-destruction, always curious for the taste of the complicated and unexplainable.
Together, Carr and Ginsberg start a small revolution in their heads, but without so many words. With the help of an unlimited supply of cannabis and some Johnny Walker, the two eventually enlist of the help of William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and a young Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and begin their uprising. Through constant disruptions by the reputation and prestige Columbia University holds so true and dear to its heart, the constantly stoned literary bandits are engulfed into a world of lovers, obsession and murder, intent on revolutionizing literature.
Kill Your Darlings starts bold and overwhelming, demanding utmost attention. Unfortunately, once attention is given, the film cannot hold its grip and deliver a rousing, culturally relevant story about some of the most influential figures in contemporary literature in the last century. Blending the lines of drug induced fantasy and reality, Kill Your Darlings is a story of breaking the formulaic path, distrusting all conventional and predictable beats of rhyme and meter, but sadly becomes a textbook festival entry with a forgettable conclusion.
The term to ‘kill your darlings’ is one that suggests destroying all the conventions and comforts of the mundane, reinventing yourself, and throwing inhibition to the wind and finding creativity will inspire instances of utter uniqueness. Kill Your Darlings, although sometimes confident, is an obsessive and complicated re-telling of enigmatic characters placed in a deceitful and overdramatized tragedy of murder. With the rich historical and cultural imprint of these feisty literary pioneers, so much of the busy murder antics is clearly overshadowing the brilliant opportunity to showcase the likes of Carr, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac.
Mixing the potential monologue moments of Weir‘s 1989 Dead Poets Society with the tone and ambiance of Salle‘s 2004 masterpiece The Motorcycle Diaries, Kill Your Darlings becomes a self-inflicted suicide of a film with a tantalizing and promising narrative. Don’t get me wrong, the performances are top notch; DeHaan is magnificent as Carr and Radcliffe is radiant as Ginsberg. However, while most of the top-billed cast is ravishing, and supporting cast is spot on, the film feels drowned in the water with average narrative cliches weighing it down.
While the antics of the underbelly of the New York Greenwich Village scene have been explored, battered, bruised and forever changed by the provocative and decadent Beat Movement, Kill Your Darlings remains a tame snippet of the life of these amazing authors and thinkers. Destined to be an example of a complicated festival biography attempt, the film will positively spark deep discussion. Kill Your Darlings repeats the initial reaction to Carr’s response to Ginsberg’s complicated life, “Perfect. I love complicated.” Hopefully next time, an autobiographical cinematic take on the origins of the Beat Generation will be less gimmicky and more focused on the howling affect these fascinating individuals had on the world of literature, art, and our contemporary culture as a whole.
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This is one of those movies that I can only understand and evaluate after researching about it. It all begins when Allen Ginsberg joins the prestigious and ultra-conservative Columbia University during World War II. There, he will meet a group of unconventional friends, with pleasure in breaking rules and confronting authorities. From this embryo, as I came to discover, would be born the "Beat Generation" (I had never even heard of it before watching). The script, however, seems indecisive. I've never been able to figure out whether the movie is about the "Beat Generation" or simply about Allen Ginsberg, the way he met his friends and the homicide related to them. This indefinition made the film tedious, with many dead moments that would have been cut off if there was some certainty on the subject. John Krokidas was unable to direct the film toward a clear and definite goal. He just went shooting.
Another problem of this film are the characters. Everything revolves around Ginsberg, the only truly well-built character. All the others are sketches and drafts, and the way the actors worked did not help mitigate that. Dane DeHaan is a stranger to me, has managed to show psychological depth and showed some talent, but his character is too iconoclastic and unpleasant for me to care about it and the same can be said of all other characters and actors. Daniel Radcliffe, who was left with the main role, has a lot of talent and is the best actor here, but his character is quite unpleasant. Another problem here was the feeling that the film makes a kind of apology to ****, something that I definitely don't approve. I know the mainstream thinking of our society tends to accept it as a different form of love, but I have the right to disagree and think otherwise without anyone being able to criticize me for it. We shouldn't live in mental dictatorships, in which mainstream dictates thoughts and opinions that we all must accept. Unfortunately, this happens and these apologies end up appearing very much like subliminal fascist or communist propaganda, used by authoritarian regimes that most people condemn. To what extent, using the cover of our democracy and mass media, does society force us to accept opinions or keep quiet if we disagree with them? It's a rhetorical question, but pertinent.
By way of conclusion, I say that I expected something else from this film. A more focused, goal-oriented script would have been more interesting. A more neutral and natural approach to the characters' sexuality would have removed the apologetic and propagandistic burden I've mentioned. More elaborate characters, capable of building empathy with public, would have resulted in greater public involvement and increased our interest in what's happening. It's a boring, tiring movie that only those who enjoy counterculture or the Beat movement will appreciate. About the crime the film portrays, I was left with the feeling that it is a mere detail of the plot.
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Production Company
Killer Films,
Benaroya Pictures,
Bow Street Films,
Outpost Studios,
Rose Pictures
Release Date Oct 16, 2013
Duration 1 h 44 m
Rating R
Tagline A true story of obsession and murder
Awards
Hamptons International Film Festival
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Venice Film Festival
• 2 Nominations
