Just two years after being the face of the biggest franchise in movie history, Daniel Radcliff is back as Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas's debut film "Kill Your Darlings," opening on Wednesday.
"Kill Your Darlings" depicts Allen Ginsberg, played by Radcliff, William Burroughs played by Ben Foster, Jack Kerouac played by Jack Huston, and Lucien Carr played by Dane DeHaan, all in the phases of their lives before becoming who the audience now knows them to be today.
The overall plot of the movie revolves around Carr and the murder of Kammerer, his college teacher who was also his lover, while bringing in each of the characters, especially Ginsberg's, sexual and writing experiences that molded them into what they are today, The New York Times reported.
Though young Allen is the film's protagonist, it's portrayed through the movie that in his eyes, and they eyes of his peers, he was more of the observer, "the boy who watches and wonders while more reckless and charismatic friends claim center stage," according to the Times.
In an interview with The Daily News, Radcliff said Krokidas was very firm about the fact that he didn't want the actors to research the characters beyond the age they were playing them.
"You're not playing Allen Ginsberg the great American poet. You're playing Allen Ginsberg, a boy from Paterson, New Jersey, desperately hoping to get into Columbia University," Krokidas' told Radcliff, according to The Daily News.
According to the Times, Burroughs (Foster) is depicted as a "natty dresser" with a huge interest in pornography and drugs that turns into Borroughs' famous "Naked Lunch"; Kerouac (Huston) is living with his girlfriend Edie Parker, played by co-star Elizabeth Olsen, as he argues and fights his way through their relationship.
When Carr, who attracts Allen with his disdain for rules and know-it-all attitude, gives Allen a copy of "A Vision" by William Butler Yeats, Carr becomes the center of Allen's universe and his muse, according to the Times.
After the relationship with Lu and Kammerer, who writes Lu's school papers in exchange for sex and throws large "bohemian" parties, goes south, Lu struggles with his sexuality as Kammerer turns desperate and aggressive, leading to the climax of the film.
According to the Times, "Kill Your Darlings" is a true-crime and coming-out story with a "stereoscopic" vision of the past and affirms Allen's coming out, as well as the journey him and his friends took during their sexual explorations.
Allen's path is predictably played out, according to the Times, because we know who he was and what he became, but "Kill Your Darlings" tried to show that in 1944, when it was all happening, it was "terrifying" and not evident to those involved. Krokidas' hopes to pass that on to the audience.
