On Kill Your Darlings

For his first feature John Krokidas has chosen a challenging subject. Trying to capture the feeling that inspired the beat generation. And for all its skill in acting and direction (the look of the film is impressive), Kill Your Darlings suffers from the same problem that Walter Salles’ On the Road (2012) suffers from.

To put the events on screen, whether they be the murder that Ginsberg was embroiled in, or his experiences at Columbia University is one thing and achieves the goal of creating fluid narrative cinema. But what the film cannot achieve (and what must be incredibly hard to achieve) is the ability to capture an artistic movement; the sensation of being a part of something exciting without knowing quite what it will lead to. Literary movements, like the beat generation, are really only open to study years after they’ve passed or begun. Even those inside it as it were happening (for Kill Your Darlings this includes Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs) were probably unsure of what they were doing. But, Krokidas has created a confident piece of cinema and tackled a difficult subject with more accomplishment than more seasoned directors.