The story of how many of the beat writers first met.
There is a reason why some movies disappear.
I was pretty excited about Kill Your Darlings when I first heard about it. I don't know much about the beat generation writers although I recognize a lot of their names. I liked how terrific the cast of the movie was. In 2013, I already knew I liked Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C. Hall, Ben Foster, David Cross, and Elizabeth Olsen. I've since rediscovered my appreciation for Jennifer Jason Leigh. Dane DeHaan and Erin Drake are known quantities now too. I'd probably know who Jack Huston was as well if I ever picked Boardwalk Empire back up. However, after hitting the festival circuit, this movie disappeared. I never heard another thing about it. I never read a Valerian review saying "you may remember Dane Dehaan from indie movies like Kill Your Darlings...". There's no Now You See Me 2 review talking about how "Daniel Racliffe returns to a summer franchise after spending his early post-Harry Potter years making smaller movies like Kill Your Darlings". The director hasn't used the movie as a lauchpad to bigger movies. It's not on any overlooked gems lists for the year. I spent so long waiting for the movie to show up on a streaming service that I finally gave up and rented the DVD from Netflix.
This movie is OK. It hits its points a little too hard. I smirked at any of the classroom scenes. Of course, they have the oldest, whitest, stodgiest professor delivering a speech about the strict rules of poetry. Ginsberg (Radcliffe) raises his hand, and like a luminary, asks why can't someone break the rules. I get it. The beat writers were about doing whatever society said they shouldn't. There are subtler ways to say it and there's no need to underline the same point so much.
Some version is the phrase "the truth is stranger than fiction" is repeated too much. It's not actually true.
A unicorn speaking Latin taught a lizard how to ride a bike.
The truth is never going to be weirder than a sentence like that. "Strange" is literally defined by being unfamiliar, alien, or hard to understand. What the phrase "the truth is stranger than fiction" is really trying to say is closer to "if it wasn't true, then I wouldn't believe it".
I met 14 people today who were all named Gwendolyn.
The odds of that being true are just about non-existent unless you went to a medieval fair or you work for the census bureau and are tracking people down alphabetically by first name. So, if that sentence was true, it would be more remarkable than any fiction. Truth is bound. Fiction is not.
The reason I bring this up is because the true story of Kill Your Darlings is pretty hard to believe. Any time a small group of friends or associates can all become big names relatively independently like Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac is pretty incredible. The fact that there's this sensational murder in the middle of it all adds another layer. I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true*. The movie struggles to deal with this. It wants to fit all these disparate pieces into the story, because it's really cool that the disparate pieces are all really connected. But, they aren't connected in a way that fits an easy narrative. Even just the beat generation philosophy and the murder story are at odds a lot of the time, let alone the individual characters' stories.
*Yeah, I understand that there are certain liberties taken with the story, but even just the true parts feel unlikely.
I apologize for this Reaction being 90% side-tangents. Kill Your Darlings assembles a better cast than it knows what to do with. I was fine watching it. It's competently made. It just tries to do too much and feels pretty fragmented as a result.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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