In which future beat poets and a future editor go to college, in ye olde days when quoting Henry Miller was daring, and both coming of age and (historical) murder happens. The later is not a spoiler, since it's in the very first scene of the film and most of the rest of the film narrates how we get there; among other things, it's also a whydunit.

I haven't seen the latest film version of On the Road (because I read the book and hadn't liked it that much), but I did watch David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch and the more recent Howl, both of which solved the problem of filming essentially unfilmable works by using some biography of their authors (William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg respectively) as a sort of narrative structure, so this is essentially the third time I've seen someone play the Beat Generation writers on screen. Something which makes it a bit odder than, say, Michael Sheen playing Tony Blalir three times for me is that I went to an Allen Ginsberg reading/recitation in Munich many years ago, and watching someone you've actually met embodied by various actors has, well, additional weirdness for at least a few minutes before you settle in and accept the film's world on its own terms. Here, young Allen Ginsberg is played by young Daniel Radcliffe, who doesn't look any more like him than James Franco did in Howl and as opposed to Franco doesn't try to capture the speech rhythm, but does deliver a very good coming-of-age-performance complete with (trying to) figure out sexuality and ethical dilemmas. Ben Foster as William Burroughs does go the impersonation route - if you've ever heard a recording of Burrough's voice you know what I mean - in a supporting role, which however also includes at least two great character showcases. (In this film, Burroughs - with about a million drugs in him at any given time - also is the almost parental voice of reason, which, you know, actually works; am reminded of the fact that in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch where he's the main character (and definitely not the voice of reason) he still calles the Keruac and Ginsberg characters "children".) The one getting most of the critical attention is Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, because it's that kind of role, which I don't mean derisively - Lucien is the charismatic seductive tormented tormentor type, and if the actor can't make you believe young Allen Ginsberg is completely swept away seconds after seeing him, everyone else is crazy about him and Michael C. Hall's David Kammerer is so obsessed with him he threw away life as a professor in favour of life as a janitor in order to be near him, the whole film falls apart. (I'm also reminded, both looks and aura wise, of the young Jude Law in Wilde as Bosie Douglas and in Ripley as Dickie Greenleaf - neither of them sympathetic characters, but believably characters who trigger devotion and/or obsession.) It's Lucien Carr who commits the murder in the first scene, and the film's answer to the "victim of a stalker who finally lashes out against said stalker oder parasite using other people's emotions for his benefit, then discarding them?" question is: both.

Part of why that ambiguity works also comes by casting Michael C. Hall as David Kammerer, in my opion. (I can't tell you what a relief it is so see Hall, whom I really like as an actor, in a non-Dexter-role again after the show went sour for me so much in its later seasons.) What David Kammerer does is, put solely on paper, just creepy, stalking a teenager, then young man across the country. (And the fact Hall wears a beard in the role emphasizes the age difference.) But Hall makes him enormously vulnerable and pathetic in the original sense of the word, having pathos, instead of menacing, plus the script points out that Lucien takes advantage of his obsession by letting David write all his papers for him until he has Allen as a replacement writer, so the usual power imbalance which their age provides is counterpoised by a reverse emotional power. One of the most interesting things the film does is also to let Allen see David as a disquieting potential future for himself - at first obviously as his rival for Lucien's affections, whom he's wildly jealous of, but there is already the flinching when Lucien calls David "a pathetic queer" and the dawning realisation when he figures out about the paper writing (and the fact that some of the well formed phrases he heard first from Lucien actually came from David), with the moment where after they finally kiss Lucien asks him to write his next paper as a turning point.

Of course, the filmi's Allen has his own experiences of being wrapped up in a hopeless relationship before he ever goes to Princeton. I had been wondering before watching it whether the movie would address Allen Ginsberg's mentally ill mother Naomi, because none of the reviews I had read mentioned her and yet growing up with her had an enormous life long impact on the real Ginsberg. (In that reading I went to in the 90s, he recited part of his Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg and it was a shattering experience to listen.) But the film does include her, and it wasn't until reading the credits I realised she's played (very well) by Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Time flies, indeed; wasn't she playing Kathy Bates' daughter yesterday?) I really liked that neither of Allen's parents were vilified and yet you could see that living with Naomi was impossible. It also made for a plausible emotional background for Allen to have in how he relates to college life, Lucien and then the murder.

The Henry Miller quote Lucien Carr is spouting in his introduction scene made me realise, upon reflection, that Lucien's role in this film - the glue and muse to a group of writers without, however, any ability to write himself, as well as the object of sexual desire - very similar to June Miller in Henry and June (which should be more correctly titled "Anais, June and Henry", where June is muse, critic and femme fatale all at once to both Anais Nin and Henry Miller. Stories with male muses, of course, are still rarer than with female ones; Capote did one in recent years, and was also one of the few films to get around the the fact that the act of writing is hard to dramatize visually. Kill Your Darlings tries to with some wannabe experimental montages, and that is one of its weaknesses, because in terms of "now we see a writer's imagination at work and bringing the words on paper", they're actually pretty standard, and just speeding up the reel doesn't do the trick. (Give me Burroughs talking to his typewriter who has transformed into an insect in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch any day.) The most successful moment that tries to show what it is these crowd of people did that made them famous later in the first place is when Allen, fearing he's about to be traded in (just as David was) for the next thing by Lucien, in this case Jack Kerouac, bursts out with something he's written (but not shown) to Lucien and Jack Kerouac's eyes light up; you can feel the excitement, words creating a bond (instead of the feared rivalry). Also, an early conversation between Allen and his father (who was also a published poet). But the montages don't really do the trick, and the film feels on safer ground with its character stuff, be it Burroughs as the high-as-a-kite-voice of reason (trying to keep David Kammerer, with whom he's been friends since childhood, from embarassing himself in public) or Allen torn between jeleaousy and unwilling understanding in his conversations with David, or the moment you can see in Lucien's face that he realises he'll never get rid of David unless he does something drastic.

Also on the plus side: like Nowhere Boy, this is a film which would work if the characters in it were completely fictional instead of based on actual people, and it benefits from the tight focus on a short period of time. The problem with biopics which try to cover an entire life is more often than not that they don't work as cinema, offering a sort of "highlights and famous lows in the life of..." revue which can't delve in depth into anything particular, and relies on the fact the audience knows such and such and hence is already invested in their well being. Kill Your Darlings isn't a cinematic masterpiece but it stands on its own legs, so to speak, and draws its characters vividly enough that you don't have to have read any of their real life works to care about what happens to them in this film.

Two X-Men recs, both Mystique/Raven-centric (which makes me happy indeed), set post First Class, with excellent ensemble use:

Puzzle Pieces: Magneto's team realises that Darwin might still be alive and attempts to find him. When they are caught in an ambush and half the team is captured, Mystique has to lead the rescue effort. Darwin calls in the kind of help that Mystique doesn't want, but does need. Great Raven-becoming-Mystique arc, Angel is fleshed out more and given plausible motivations, and the eventual joining of teams for the rescue has just the right amount of tension and effectiveness you'd hope for.

Faceless in our dreaming state: this one also presents a different yet also plausible version of how Raven and the rest of the newly formed team around Magneto might adjust to each other (excellent characterisation of Emma!), and of how they might interact with Charles, Hank & Co. post film.


Recently watched on dvd:


Howl: an oddity which defies definition and might be a genre of its own, though Cronenberg's Naked Lunch goes a bit (but only a bit) in the same direction, taking as it did a basically unfilmable classic by a Beat poet and interspersing it with the author's life. However, Cronenberg's film is still fiction with a plot (of sorts) and alternate names, whereas Howl, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (whose most famous film so far was the documentary The Celluloid Closet), mixes animated sequences to the sound of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl with sequences of a young Ginsberg (played by James Franco) reciting, sequences of slightly older Ginsberg (still James Franco) being interviewed about his life, and scenes from the obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who published Howl) (showcase of spot-that-famous-actor, for example Jon "Don Draper" Hamn as Ferlinghetti's and Ginsberg's lawyer). Not a biopic, because the acted interview and trial scenes are a) more in the style of reenactment, as sometimes now is the custom in documentaries , and b) just about one third of the film; the other two thirds are really the poem recitation and animation. So basically this is a film both of and about a poem. Which I haven't seen done before.

Now, I actually met Allen Ginsberg once. In the usual way one meets a world famous poet, i.e. I went to a reading/recitation evening of his in Munich and had one of his books signed for me. It was a great experience (he was an old man by then of course, but it was amazing how vibrant and alert he came across). It did make seeing Franco as Ginsberg a bit disconcerting because they don't look much alike, and for the first few minutes of the film, don't much sound alike, either. Then Franco gets into Ginsberg's very distinctive way of reciting (and the animated sequence capture the jazz rhythms of it all very wellL), shows the body language and mannerisms, and once he acquires a beard for the interview sequences it's a dead-on impersonation, so that at the very end of the film when you see brief footage of old Allen G. reciting (just as I've seen him) it's not a jolting experience but transitions very well. The animation didn't go for a literal 1-to-1 translation of Ginsberg's imagery but for the most part was really well done and inventive. When I watched the Making of documentary on the dvd I found out this was originally inspired by Ginsberg's publisher wanting something to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Howl (as it turned out the film was released on the 55th anniversary instead), and I suspect Ginsberg would have enjoyed this war more than an actual biopic.


Unconnected to the film: my favourite Ginsberg anecdote is probably the one about him visiting Ezra Pound in 1967 and playing Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for him. Supposedly the line "no one was saved" in Eleanor Rigby made Pound smile a little, which is Ezra Pound for you. The whole encounter is one of those bizarre-wouldn't-dare-to-invent-it things because Pound did some truly awful things during the war, including antisemtic propaganda broadcasts, and Allen Ginsberg knew this but also regarded Pound as one of the poets whose poetry most shaped him as a writer, so he literally reached out a hand, and Pound responded with the only bit of remorse he ver expressed on the subject to the Jewish-American poet who came armed with Beatles, Dylan and Donovan records and the declaration that "Your cantos were very important to me": “My worst mistake was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism – spoiled everything.”

Ginsberg had met the Beatles in person in 1965 and then re-met Paul McCartney via mutual friend Barry Miles in 1967, which led to a long term transatlantic friendship and Paul backing him up on guitar when Ginsberg recited his Ballad of the Skeletons at the Royal Albert Hall on October 16th, 1995. (Conversely, Electric Arguments, the title of the third Fireman album, is taken from an Allen Ginsberg poem.) Behold: