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Viewed at Jameson Cinefest in Miskolc Hungary, September 2013, a modest festival in a secondary city that has now become the most important film festival in the country and growing steadily with unusual heads up programming. KYD, the debut feature by 29 year old director John Krokidas, is a dope fueled coming of age story of soon-to-be literary celebrities before they became notoriously well known which then turns into a more than routine crime thriller. The murder of a homosexual older man in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs during their college campus years at Columbia. With Dan Radcliffe as Ginsberg, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, and English actor Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and a cameo by Jennifer Jason Leigh (49) as Ginsberg's mentally ill Jewish mother.
The ingredients for a fascinating film are all there but "Kill your Darlings" Is the kind of dismemorable title that can kill a picture before it starts. The packed auditorium where I saw it indicated a strong advance curiosity quotient reflecting the high level of literary awareness of Hungarian filmgoers, but it left me cold. While these were the literary icons of my own college days (I even met Ginsberg in person several times) and this is a period of high personal interest for me, I felt no sense of authenticity or real resonance with Theophrastus L WW II period. Above all the central Ginsberg portrayal was way off in my view and not at all true to life -- true, perhaps, to current screen life since the main actor, Daniel Radcliffe, (as Ginsberg) is an international celebrity because of his lead roles in the Harry Potter films,but painfully miscast hero. A little too canny for its own good this respectable first effort will only get a limited release because it is far more neo-intellectual than mainstream, and will probably disappear from view quickly.
For the record the story deals with Ginsberg's short stay at Columbia University in 1944 where he meets his first important gay lover, the oh-so-hip Lucien Carr. Carr introduces him to his buddies future Beat Generation celebrities Jack Kerouac and William Boroughs, neither very believably portrayed, and then accidentally kills one of his other lovers, the middle aged David Kammerer, while trying to ward off undesired sexual advances. (Sample dialog: Carr: "I was a kid, and you dragged me into your perverted mess. Kammerer: "How can you say that? You know that's not true. I will never give up on us. Carr: "You're pathetic! ~ and stabs him with a pocket knife) Whike there are some references to the early writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac this picture deals mostly with the involvement of the future literary icons in this little known fait divers, which was briefly big news at the time, but was never referred to in their later writings. Nice try, better luck next time.😜
Viewed at Jameson Cinefest in Miskolc Hungary, September 2013, a modest festival in a secondary city that has now become the most important film festival in the country and growing steadily with unusual heads up programming. KYD, the debut feature by 29 year old director John Krokidas, is a dope fueled coming of age story of soon-to-be literary celebrities before they became notoriously well known which then turns into a more than routine crime thriller. The murder of a homosexual older man in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs during their college campus years at Columbia. With Dan Radcliffe as Ginsberg, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, and English actor Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and a cameo by Jennifer Jason Leigh (49) as Ginsberg's mentally ill Jewish mother.
The ingredients for a fascinating film are all there but "Kill your Darlings" Is the kind of dismemorable title that can kill a picture before it starts. The packed auditorium where I saw it indicated a strong advance curiosity quotient reflecting the high level of literary awareness of Hungarian filmgoers, but it left me cold. While these were the literary icons of my own college days (I even met Ginsberg in person several times) and this is a period of high personal interest for me, I felt no sense of authenticity or real resonance with Theophrastus L WW II period. Above all the central Ginsberg portrayal was way off in my view and not at all true to life -- true, perhaps, to current screen life since the main actor, Daniel Radcliffe, (as Ginsberg) is an international celebrity because of his lead roles in the Harry Potter films,but painfully miscast hero. A little too canny for its own good this respectable first effort will only get a limited release because it is far more neo-intellectual than mainstream, and will probably disappear from view quickly.
For the record the story deals with Ginsberg's short stay at Columbia University in 1944 where he meets his first important gay lover, the oh-so-hip Lucien Carr. Carr introduces him to his buddies future Beat Generation celebrities Jack Kerouac and William Boroughs, neither very believably portrayed, and then accidentally kills one of his other lovers, the middle aged David Kammerer, while trying to ward off undesired sexual advances. (Sample dialog: Carr: "I was a kid, and you dragged me into your perverted mess. Kammerer: "How can you say that? You know that's not true. I will never give up on us. Carr: "You're pathetic! ~ and stabs him with a pocket knife) Whike there are some references to the early writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac this picture deals mostly with the involvement of the future literary icons in this little known fait divers, which was briefly big news at the time, but was never referred to in their later writings. Nice try, better luck next time.😜