Fresh and Exciting

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The overall solid, but ultimately mediocre "Kill Your Darlings" reveals its key problem at the very beginning. We see a dead body held by a character suggesting that some sort of murder will play a central role in the film. Hence, we will end up watching a crime drama. The problem is that the moment the story turns in that direction, the film loses its focus. But first we are introduced to the very young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) who enrols in college where he meets the very young Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and eventually Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). The first half of the film revolves around their frustrations with the conventions of poetry and literature they are taught at Columbia. The professors insist on strict rules one has to apply so that "creation equals imitation" . They are disgusted by the fetishisation of rhyme and metre. Inspired by poets as Yates and Whitman, they decide to write a manifesto propagating free expression of the self without any boundaries as writing's highest virtue, resulting in acts of disobedience like replacing several "high works" in the library for example the original version of Beowulf with works of personal role models like Melville. For that part of the film, "Kill Your Darlings" is a fairly engaging if all too standard period piece that checks every box with vivid jazz music, smoking in bars,emphasis on old-fashion dressing styles and technology as record players and scratchy radio sound while it is at the same time a depiction of a group of idealistic artists with the expected scenes of alcohol and drug abuse, hectic writing on a typewriter and the rebellion against authority figures like the professors. This is fine, even though one cannot help but feel that a depiction of these artists in their prime would maybe make the more interesting film. But if we perceive them as the literary Avengers, than this has to be considered their origin story. As already mentioned, the turning point where the film really loses momentum is marked by the murder of David Kammerer (David C. Hall) a dubious mentor-like figure for Lucien Carr. Here the standard period piece with interesting central characters becomes an even more standard crime story/court drama, where the characters' appeal dissolves in the genre's basic themes of rage, revenge and guilt. From that point on, it does not really matter that we are dealing with literary geniuses. Sure, this story is part of their life. But if you decide to make a movie about Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, do you really need to focus on a gloomy murder story that we have seen so many times before with the only difference being that these characters incidentally have changed the literary landscape of the second half of the twentieth century? For what it's worth, you could place those characters in a bar having them smoking, drinking and discussing art for two hours and you could end up with an engaging piece of film that truly explores the workings of these characters' minds. It definitely would be more ingenious than what we witness here. Many have pointed out the film's central contradiction of depicting people that think in a very unconventional manner with quite conventional means. At least, the actors try their best to bring the artists' unique approach not only to literature but to life in general to the screen. Daniel Radcliffe does a good job at playing the very introvert Ginsberg at the start of his studies who eventually breaks more and more out of his shell and seems to experience what it means to be alive for the first time. It is unfortunate that Ginsberg had a thing for those round spectacles which are quite iconic but also unmistakably reminiscent of a certain young wizard. All the more surprising then, how strikingly Radcliffe shakes this notion off and manages to portray Ginsberg in a convincing manner. The same is true for the central performances of DeHaan, Foster and Huston who individually bring the antics of their quite eccentric characters to life without overdoing it (especially Foster balances on a tightrope here) and collectively have a vivid chemistry between them. They are surrounded by a decent supporting cast with David Cross, the always welcome Elizabeth Olsen and a small but noticeable part by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Given that everything about this movie is fairly run-of-the-mill, the at times odd choice of music seems like a slightly desperate attempt to appear unorthodox. Apart from the aforementioned use of Jazz as a time marker we hear some anachronistic pieces of post-punk that kind of fit the scenery, but also one song in particular that completely kills the mood which is the (normally delightful) "Don't Look Back Into the Sun" by the Libertines. It plays over the end credits. Soundaestethically it completely counters everything we have just seen and heard before, which is somewhat reminiscent of the infamous "Goodfellas" end credits which I also have never been a big fan of, but whose moment of surprise I can acknowledge. This is just trying too hard. Where "Marie Antoinette" fails to follow up the snotty "Natural's Not in It" of the opening credits, "Kill Your Darlings" ends on a very rousing note while both movies deliver a very tame rendition of their real characters' astonishing lives. In both cases the choice of music may reveal that the films are not even closely as courageous and offbeat as they think they are. Just as the title is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. I mean, come on. Really?Incidentally the fact that it does carry a double meaning - since an actual murder is part of the story - is the first hint at why this movie cannot live up to the expectations a film about the Beat poets evokes in the first place.

This type of movie is not usually my cup of tea, not being particularly interested in the beat movement/ poets etc. But I was bored and this popped up and I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed and it would definitely watch it again. ( I actually feel it needs more than one watch to understand it and get more benefit out of it) The acting was fantastic, all the main characters did fabulous jobs, though I felt Dehann stole the show a bit and really upped the game! Radcliffe was, as usual, fantastic!I don't have much knowledge of the actual story of the murder or the relationships before watching this but Lucien seemed to demonstrate almost sociopathic behavior and I am not sure whether is was because Dehann played his part too well or if I have just got the wrong idea?will def watch again and really recommend it!

It's a story of the poet Allen Ginsberg's youth, from a nice Jewish kid in Patterson, New Jersey, to a dropout from Columbia University in 1944. This milieu -- and the neighborhood called North Beach in San Francisco -- produced the Beat Generation or Beatniks. Many of them, the ones we meet in this film, went on to considerable but ephemeral fame -- Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Ginsberg himself, probably best noted for his poem "Howl." The title, "Kill Your Darlings," is from William Faulkner who, taken either by a fit of absurdity or maybe drunkenness, advised writers to delete those passages in their manuscripts that they liked best. If you like something, you wind up obsessed and your judgment fails you.I suppose that's the central theme of the film. Ginsberg falls for Lucien Carr and Carr rejects the importunings of his former lover, David Kammerer, and finally brutally murders Kammerer. I can understand Kammerer's obsession with Carr. Not that I understand eros between two men but I do understand obsession. It took me years to discover which major ocean port was in the middle of Czechoslovia.Daniel Radcliffe is Ginsberg and although he has the name of one of the seven sisters he looks like Ginsberg probably looked -- puny with horn-rimmed glasses. I don't know what Lucien Carr looked like but I can believe he was something like Dane DeHaan -- beautiful and effete. Michael C. Hall is Kammerer, who begins as a commanding figure and winds up a shivering supplicant. All the performances are adequate but Hall's may be the best of the lot. Kerouac is a marginal figure, a football hero and athlete who can also read and write. William Burroughs, Ben Foster here, should do a one-man show as a young Harry Truman.The atmosphere is rich, but the story doesn't quite come together, nor did I care much about who loved who. I don't quite know what happened towards the end. The director and editor turned the murder into the climax, understandably. But they rather spoiled it by giving us broad hints in flashbacks before what is supposed to be the full reveal. The shock they were presumably aiming at is diluted by the sometimes misleading adumbrations and by the generally confused sequence of events leading up to it. Besides, David Kammerer, as portrayed, was a ridiculous pain in the ass. And the title doesn't fit. Carr kills Kammerer, true, but Kammerer was no longer Carr's "darling". Just the other way round.And I'm guessing at the constant early references to a revolution in literature -- about how things get more and more separated from their center and need to be pulled back by revolutionaries -- is borrowed from Yeats' "The Second Coming", the business about the widening gyre, except that everything these guys do, like destroying the classics in the Columbia library and substituting pornography, isn't "pulling back" at all. They're not calling the falcon back. They're setting him loose. Literary chaos is slouching towards Bethlehem.Not that the stuff they produced can be easily dismissed. Ginsberg's "Howl", Kerouac's "On the Road," and Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" are unforgettable. They read poetry in front of jazz combos in North Beach and the Village. Is one permitted to ask about the aspirations of today's generation of college youths? Anyway, Ginsberg held his act together for the rest of his life, finally finding a steady lover. Kerouac became a smelly drunk, and Burroughs a junkie. But while it lasted -- what gusto!

William Burroughs is the most boring person who ever lived. Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac are close behind. Allen Ginsberg is interesting for two reasons.First, he was a surprisingly ordinary, unremarkable, and unpretentious person, as open and honest and honorable as he knew how to be; not a great poet or a great anything else, but great at being himself. Second, Daniel Radcliffe plays him in this movie. Radcliffe is amazing.I was never a Potter fan, but I saw some of the movies. Radcliffe made no impression on me at all. But he's made some interesting choices since that ended, and I wanted to see what he's like outside of that tedious Potter world. So Radcliffe is the reason I watched this, but I immediately forgot who he was. He thoroughly and convincingly becomes the Ginsberg character in this movie, and he makes that character far more interesting and complex than the real Ginsberg was.Every second he's on screen is marvelous because of him and only because of him. Nothing else about this movie is worth watching. Performers I've liked previously (Foster, Hall, DeHaan) are flat and dumb here. Only Jennifer Jason Leigh and David Cross, as Ginsberg's parents, are halfway believable and seem almost like real people. All the rest are just annoying posers.For this story to work (I could care less that it's true) Carr MUST be a charismatic character, and he's not charismatic at all in this movie. He's just a jerk. And he's ugly. That anybody would have looked at him twice or paid attention to a word he said is completely unbelievable - except Burroughs, who was a spoiled, self-obsessed moron and even more obnoxious than Carr himself.So I love Allen Ginsberg because he was so extraordinarily ordinary; and I love Daniel Radcliffe as Ginsberg in this movie, but that's all I love about it.