![]() Ginsberg and Carr cut their palms and press them together to perform a ceremony of blood brotherhood. The boys transform their formal clothes into tribal costumes, wrapping ties around their heads. Shredded paper floats through the air like cinders. In one scene, Ginsberg, Carr and Burroughs cannibalize copies of literary classics with scissors and nail them to the walls in an effort to create a neo-Dadaist masterpiece. Women rarely enter the picture, and when they do, they fall into one of three narrow categories: nagging wife (Kerouac’s girlfriend Edie, a squandered Elisabeth Olson), burdensome lunatic (Ginsberg’s mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) or sexy-hungry bimbo (a ravenous Barnard student).Īt times, “Darlings” seem to channel classic cinematic coming-of-age tales. Ginsberg, Carr, Kerouac and Burroughs have all begun to realize the scope of their own talents, but in the moment of this film, they’re all still a bunch of immature young adults. Krokidas’ film is a coming-of-age story, filtered through the uncertain, dizzy perspective of male adolescents. In “Kill Your Darlings,” vision is unreliable and the truth hovers, indistinguishable, on the periphery. Even subjects in the foreground fall out of focus because of the motion of the handheld camera. The film is shot in shallow focus so that most objects in the frame become blurry. Using the camera to his advantage, cinematographer Reed Morano makes the audience acutely aware of the limits of restricted narration. But while Ginsberg is the protagonist, the film also floats continuously between the perspectives of the entire main ensemble. Radcliffe delivers an excellent nuanced performance, comfortably wearing the role of a man who is not yet uncomfortable in his own skin. ![]() Krokidas has chosen to focus on the legendary Allen Ginsberg – a fortunate decision for the audience. As these young men try to create a new literary movement, the murder of Carr’s mentor and lover Kammerer both traumatizes and inspires them all. Carr introduces him to his Bohemian circle of friends, including William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Houston). A self-proclaimed “poet” who has yet to write a single word, Ginsberg is taken under the wing of the worldly, charismatic Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan). The film opens on a young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) entering Columbia University as a freshman in 1944. But in the film “Kill Your Darlings,” it’s not just unnecessary words that are getting cut. The title of “Kill Your Darlings” comes from a famous piece of writing advice from William Faulkner, advising writers to “kill your darlings,” to mercilessly remove any unnecessary pieces of one’s work, no matter how much the writer may be attached to them. This is the lesson of debut director John Krokidas’ “Kill Your Darlings,” which takes Faulkner’s philosophy of artistic ruthlessness to a murderous extreme.
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