Fascination of the Beat Generation – “Kill your Darlings” review

Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg Photo by Jessica Miglio, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

“Kill your Darlings”, which had its World Premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, is the second film this year showing the fascination of the Beat Generation; Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, an iconic group of poets in the 1950’s. The first was “On the Road”, directed by Walter Salles, that was adapted on to the screen from the Jack Kerouac book with the same title. “Kill your Darlings” directed by John Krokidas, focuses and follows a young Allen Ginsberg during his early years at Columbia University and the story based on true events of his life.

In 1944, Allen Ginsberg was a nervous freshman at the university, Jack Kerouac was a college football player who lasted eight days in the U.S. Navy, and William Burroughs was a medical school dropout. All of them were hanging on the fringes of the New York bohemian scene, along with Lucien Carr and David Krammerer, forming their “The New Vision” for art and literature and searching for reckless adventures, innovation in style, experimentation with drugs and alternative sexualities. The film delivers a picture of the nascent Beat Generation and tells the story of the emotional transition that leads them to their own voice. The true story of friendship, love and murder, had changed Allen Ginsberg’s life and provided the spark for him to start his creative writing.

“Kill your Darlings” is the first feature film by John Krokidas. He and co-writer, Austin Bunn, were college roommates at Yale University and much of their first experiences ended up in this screenplay. Both carefully chose the appropriate actors for the characters, such as Daniel Radcliffe (Allen Ginsberg) who is known from the Harry Potter series, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, and Ben Foster as William Burroughs. Brilliant, vibrant dialogues, French style camera that reflects the writer’s expression and complexity of their characters are the strong points of this film.

Opens November 1 at Clay Theater and Century 9 in San Francisco, Shattuck in Berkeley, Aquarius Twin in Palo Alto.