By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.9
Director: John Krokidas
Starring: Ben Foster | Dane DeHaan. Michael C. Hall | Daniel Radcliffe | David Cross | Elizabeth Olsen | Jack Huston | Jennifer Jason Leigh | John Cullum
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 104
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1311071/combined
Thom says: “WARNING SPOILER: I Do give some information away but since the film is based on fact I felt I had the license but if you would be disturbed stop reading now.
“It’s rare to see such an utterly brilliant debut from a first-time director although apparently Krokidas has worked on refining his script for than 10 years with different actors originally in mind for this well-cast beauty. Wisely the script uses Allen Ginsberg as the protagonist and the amazing Daniel Radcliffe portrays him to perfection. Ginsberg has of late been enacted by John Turturro, Ron Livingston, Tim Hickey, Hank Azaria, David Cross (wait a minute doesn’t he play Ginsberg’s papa in this film?), James Franco (sensational as Ginsberg in the great HOWL, Tom Sturridge (in the disturbingly overlooked ON THE ROAD). So Radcliffe had a lot of antecedents but because he got to portray the first-blush-of-youth quality of Ginsberg that he assays brilliantly, he is a firmament here to the rock-solid approach.
“And yet, the film is so much more than the early incidents of Ginsberg; there’s the youthful Jack Kerouac excitingly played by Jack Huston (so thrilling on the breathtaking BOARDWALK EMPIRE & noteworthy great-grandson of Walter, grandson of John), & the perfectly lackadaisical Ben Foster as the spaced-out William Burroughs. They all hook up & get in serious trouble with Lucien Carr, a mercurial salve that tries to hold the irresponsible highbrows together. Dragging along behind is his millstone David Kammerer, an older intellectual, portrayed as tragic, by the superb Michael C. Hall.
“The young literary lions are attending Columbia University (where I worked for 12 years) are all drawn towards Carr, who even with a dark trail of baggage is an involving, sexually charged dynamo. He’s an effete spellbinder, but he’s also a deliberate cock-tease to the point of being offensive. At an earlier interlude in Chicago, the toddling town, Kammerer had saved Carr’s life but if he ever had showed his gratitude there is none left to give when Kammerer shows up in New York, all bright, pitiful, even loathsome. Carr finally ends up murdering his older lover.
“While Ginsberg is totally captivated by the harmful but mesmerizing Carr he refuses to go so far as to subjectify the actual homicide, but remains otherwise devoted to until Carr sues to have his name taken off the Dedication Page of Howl. Carr totally got away with murder by pleading sexual harassment on the part of his old lover.
“The always-outstanding Jennifer Jason Leigh is riveting as Ginsberg’s schizophrenic mother who is cruelly institutionalized by Ginsberg’s cheating dad. I felt thrown back to the era and was hearkened back to like scenes in my life, although nothing close to murder. Complex, but still able to take the moral high ground with subtlety and clever verve. Bless the established actors for going out on a limb here for higher art. 5 cats”
Jason says: “It’s probably not a good sign when the cast member of a movie featuring several noteworthy young actors playing real-life people whose names, at least, should be familiar to all in the audience who makes the biggest impression is the guy playing the lead character’s father in a handful of scenes. And while that deliberately overstates what a drag KILL YOUR DARLINGS turns out to be, it’s also not far off-base: There’s a heck of a story being told by this movie, but the guys who should be making it great seldom get much of a chance to shine.
“It’s 1943, and Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) has been accepted to Columbia University. He has inherited a talent for poetry from his father Louis (David Cross), but is already chafing at the formality of it. That draws him to upperclassman Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who has bounced around various schools before landing in New York; Lucien brings him to a party at the house of David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) where they meet William Burroughs and begin plotting a literary ‘New Vision’. Eventually the group expands to include Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), but by that time it’s become clear that while Lucien is a charismatic ringleader, he’s got some severe issues, with David at the center of them.
“The film opens with someone dying and Allen writing an account of the events that hit too close to home for some, so those issues are rather severe indeed. That flash-forward is over quickly, but that it’s there at all seems a mistake – when a movie opens with murder, that just highlights how the next hour of young men talking about how they’re going to liberate themselves from the restrictions of meter and formality (aided, of course, by drugs and alcohol) is not particularly interesting to non-English majors, particularly since director John Krokidas and co-writer Austin Bunn don’t actually show us why this is such an important step beyond schoolboy pranks. It feels like a long time before the movie circles back around, long enough that some of the most interesting parts of the story get reduced to captions before the credits.
“And it’s not as though the set-up needed to get there is particularly complicated – the exact details of the situation with Lucien and David take awhile to come out, but are never particularly important; it’s pretty clear from the start. Similarly, Allen’s attraction to Lucien beyond the desire to change the world of literature is obvious from the start, but runs in place for so long with such a theatrical performance from DeHaan that it often feels more like a parody of the way queer themes would be inserted into old movies via innuendo than the real thing. Meanwhile, there are subplots involving Allen’s mother and Jack’s girlfriend that do little but squander the presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Elizabeth Olsen (and Kyra Sedgwick, who goes uncredited as Lucien’s mother).
“But, then, this is a movie about young men, and the cast is fairly adequate there. Radcliffe may not be giving a spellbinding performance, but he is more than good enough to hold the movie together as Allen Ginsberg; his performance never feels like an impersonation despite the hairdo he’s given as much as a likable, unworldly young man with some talent and a rebellious streak. Dane DeHaan goes the other way for much of the movie, playing an over-educated but under-achieving student with the sort of upper-class accent that often seems more like a reference to stock film characters than an individual, although he’s usually not bad when circumstances break through that persona. Michael C. Hall actually underplays his stalker’s combination of being authoritative and pathetic fairly nicely. Still, Jack Huston and Ben Foster often seem to be there just because Burroughs and Kerouac were a part of the story and are too famous to exclude or composite. David Cross, on the other hand, brings enough energy to Louis Ginsberg whenever he pops up briefly that I wished he was in more than a handful of scenes, even if a father-and-son story wasn’t in the cards.
“The group of famous figures seems to make Krokidas and company a little lazy at times, as though these literary giants’ reputations should be enough to make them interesting. Not all the time – the jazzy titles and opening do presage a few fairly energetic moments, for instance. Another attempt to inject some style into the picture feels labored and flat, though – flashbacks often include bits being run backwards, but often of moments that are so relatively still that the audience spends more time wondering what sort of gibberish is being sucked into the characters’ mouths than recognizing the device for what it is.
“That at least indicates effort being made to make a great film, and it’s not like that work is never rewarded. But perhaps Krokidas could have followed the exhortation of the film’s title and cut out the nice but unnecessary bits that ground the telling of a good story to a halt, or allowed the ruthlessness to show up in that story more. Instead, it’s far less than a true story about legends tangled up in scandal and murder should be. 2.75 cats
“Seen 9 November 2013 at Landmark Kendall Square #1 (first-run, DCP)