Kill Your Darlings
Dec. 8th, 2013 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99But first two comments about some other films I saw bits for:
1 - WTF have they done to '47 Ronin'? So WTF that I had to bite my lip not to say something along those lines at the cinema.
2 - Spike Lee's Oldboy, again, just WTF in general. Because I don't see how you can remake that. And Josh Brolin instead of Min-Sik Choi who looked so, to use a Grandma-ism, driven from home. I mean, it's not like Oldboy is even my favourite Chan-Wook Park film (Lady Vengeance is. Lady Vengeance is one of the best films of the 2000-2009s. More people should see it.) but there are things that do not translate.
~~~~
On to Kill Your Darlings.
First important detail - Twig is right, Ben Foster can act.
I only went to see it because I needed a break from shopping and I have a Cineworld card. That and I'd heard Jack Huston was in it and he's been good in bad films so I wanted to see what he was like in a film that looked like it could be good.
The film was good.
I mean, there was a horrible sort of relateability to Allen Ginsberg, to the point where I wondered if I ought to send the character my "how to survive uni" guide. Point 1 being "no more blonds with substance abuse issues". There's something very, not innocent, but something you want to protect about him. And you can see him growing up in front of your eyes. It's a good performance from Daniel Radcliffe.
I also like how they handled his parents (although, when did Jennifer Jason Leigh become old enough to play mothers? And what about her makes people cast her as mentally unwell mothers?) because it's played as no-one's fault and treating his mother makes her better.
Michael C. Hall does a fine line in intense crazy. Huston's Jack Kerouac is suitably roistering. Due to my accent and my hearing I misheard Ben Foster's character's name as David Burrows, which, you know, meant that when he turned out to be William Burroughs (I'd forgotten to account for the differences in Northern UK and US vowels) I had a bit of a shock. Possibly because, despite the way that he appeared, did strange things, departed for another half an hour, a character based on William Burroughs was the only sensible man. While being as high as a kite on a terrifying variety of drugs. It's really interesting how he tries to protect Kammerer from himself, in the scene in the cafe for instance, where he goes "there's a time and a place," and tries to get him to not embarrass himself in public and then leaves when he goes. Or the scene after Kammerer dies, and you're wondering why he's got a bloody cigarette packet, then the film explains why, and there's this plaintive statement (he tends to statements rather than dialogue) of "he was my friend first". It is, to me, the stand out performance in a film with no bad performances.
Even Edie Parker, who is the film for all of three scenes, is magnificent. She loves her man but is aware of his many, many, many faults.
Now to my downsides part:
The director kept trying to be clever and failing. Sort of like Danny Boyle but without that ... Danny Boyle magic touch.
I don't know a lot about the Beat poets as individuals so I don't know how accurate the film is to what happened or what Lucien Carr was like, but it feels like a hatchet job. Everyone else gets to be clever or be arty or be relatable and he gets none of that, and is only ever seen as being the centre of disaster, a disaster that he may or may not have manipulated into occurring. It feels unsatisfactory, especially given how much older Kammerer in particular is, especially when whatever first happened happened.
Was when they'd stolen the boat and Jack is ranting about the pointlessness of movements in art and how it's all lies and conceit (and I'm nodding along, agreeing with him), then Lucien basically taunts Allen when he disagrees with Jack (out of jealousy and poor punctuation), and Jack's writing, so Allen stands up and reads out the thing he'd written but not showed to Lucien, and Jack just stops because what he's hearing is good. I think it just captures that delight when you hear something that's brilliant.
Whoever was in charge of the music either has no knowledge of the Libertines or has an exquisitely twisted sense of humour when they chose "Don't Look Back Into The Sun" as the end music. I nearly cackled in public. (It turns out the director and Daniel Radcliffe have a twisted sense of humour.)
1 - WTF have they done to '47 Ronin'? So WTF that I had to bite my lip not to say something along those lines at the cinema.
2 - Spike Lee's Oldboy, again, just WTF in general. Because I don't see how you can remake that. And Josh Brolin instead of Min-Sik Choi who looked so, to use a Grandma-ism, driven from home. I mean, it's not like Oldboy is even my favourite Chan-Wook Park film (Lady Vengeance is. Lady Vengeance is one of the best films of the 2000-2009s. More people should see it.) but there are things that do not translate.
~~~~
On to Kill Your Darlings.
First important detail - Twig is right, Ben Foster can act.
I only went to see it because I needed a break from shopping and I have a Cineworld card. That and I'd heard Jack Huston was in it and he's been good in bad films so I wanted to see what he was like in a film that looked like it could be good.
The film was good.
I mean, there was a horrible sort of relateability to Allen Ginsberg, to the point where I wondered if I ought to send the character my "how to survive uni" guide. Point 1 being "no more blonds with substance abuse issues". There's something very, not innocent, but something you want to protect about him. And you can see him growing up in front of your eyes. It's a good performance from Daniel Radcliffe.
I also like how they handled his parents (although, when did Jennifer Jason Leigh become old enough to play mothers? And what about her makes people cast her as mentally unwell mothers?) because it's played as no-one's fault and treating his mother makes her better.
Michael C. Hall does a fine line in intense crazy. Huston's Jack Kerouac is suitably roistering. Due to my accent and my hearing I misheard Ben Foster's character's name as David Burrows, which, you know, meant that when he turned out to be William Burroughs (I'd forgotten to account for the differences in Northern UK and US vowels) I had a bit of a shock. Possibly because, despite the way that he appeared, did strange things, departed for another half an hour, a character based on William Burroughs was the only sensible man. While being as high as a kite on a terrifying variety of drugs. It's really interesting how he tries to protect Kammerer from himself, in the scene in the cafe for instance, where he goes "there's a time and a place," and tries to get him to not embarrass himself in public and then leaves when he goes. Or the scene after Kammerer dies, and you're wondering why he's got a bloody cigarette packet, then the film explains why, and there's this plaintive statement (he tends to statements rather than dialogue) of "he was my friend first". It is, to me, the stand out performance in a film with no bad performances.
Even Edie Parker, who is the film for all of three scenes, is magnificent. She loves her man but is aware of his many, many, many faults.
Now to my downsides part:
The director kept trying to be clever and failing. Sort of like Danny Boyle but without that ... Danny Boyle magic touch.
I don't know a lot about the Beat poets as individuals so I don't know how accurate the film is to what happened or what Lucien Carr was like, but it feels like a hatchet job. Everyone else gets to be clever or be arty or be relatable and he gets none of that, and is only ever seen as being the centre of disaster, a disaster that he may or may not have manipulated into occurring. It feels unsatisfactory, especially given how much older Kammerer in particular is, especially when whatever first happened happened.
Was when they'd stolen the boat and Jack is ranting about the pointlessness of movements in art and how it's all lies and conceit (and I'm nodding along, agreeing with him), then Lucien basically taunts Allen when he disagrees with Jack (out of jealousy and poor punctuation), and Jack's writing, so Allen stands up and reads out the thing he'd written but not showed to Lucien, and Jack just stops because what he's hearing is good. I think it just captures that delight when you hear something that's brilliant.
Whoever was in charge of the music either has no knowledge of the Libertines or has an exquisitely twisted sense of humour when they chose "Don't Look Back Into The Sun" as the end music. I nearly cackled in public. (It turns out the director and Daniel Radcliffe have a twisted sense of humour.)
