Kill Your Darlings (2013) is a splendid movie which is based around the Beat Generation Poets- Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. It is from Allen’s P.O.V. and revolves on the friendship and relationships among the characters, and their revolutionary ideas, but it mainly focuses around Allen and his love for Lucian. The direction and cinematography of the movie was very refreshing, and the warm colour palette lends it a flavour of comfort. Some scenes were outright visual masterpieces. But the one thing that drew me in was the underlying scent of mystery throughout the movie; it felt as though even after watching it, some things remained blurry, and had to be revisited and thoroughly thought-through in order to be understood, and I LOVED this. For a critical thinker, many questions arose throughout the movie, which required deep philosophical introspection. Personally, a question that spontaneously jumped to the forefront of my mind was: Love or Obsession?
It was apparent from the start that the movie was rife with underlying tones and metaphors, and while I did search reviews and analysis posts for them, I wasn't satisfied. So, I've decided to compile some points which struck me and analyze the movie in this post (I also recommend checking out the linked post primarily to read the argument on why "The Night in Question" description by Allen was fictitious).
Here, I try to delve deep into the characters, especially that of Lucian, in an attempt to bring up his wonderful intricacies.
The well-crafted characters of the story
I found the characters of the story very well-built-up and utterly credible. The characters were furnished with an important backstory pertaining to their identity which gave us clues as to why they were the way they were.
Allen- the loveable protagonist : We join Allen Ginsberg as he joins Columbia University and embarks on a life-changing journey. Perhaps this story is more remarkable as by its end, his disposition changes and he becomes a much better version of himself. Daniel Radcliffe is completely adorable in the role, and lends an air of sincere naivety and inexperience. From the beginning, we have no problem in seeing Allen representing the spectators. As the movie progresses, we see Allen fall in love with Lucian; and as Allen fell for Lucian, we did too.
Lucian, the fallen angel: While the story is definitely about Allen, we discover that it is Lucian who happens to be the Show-stopper. As someone once described him, he is the Maniac Pixie Dream Boy. With blond hair, Ocean Blue eyes and a red scarf around his neck at all times, he is the vision and personification of Male beauty. And had his appearance been not enough, his personality was sure to tempt an onlooker to fall in love with him: bold, unafraid, rebellious and a visionary. His charm, charisma and mystique made everyone rejoice every time he was on screen.
The name Lucian is of Latin origin, and it means light. His name plays an important role because the character quite literally embodies it. From the very moment of introduction, we are drawn to Lucian. He's bold and radiant, and illuminated the way for his colleagues to achieve a literary revolution. He lit up the vision of a new generation of poetry-he was the visionary. He saw the talent hidden in Allen and irradiated it and made him something beautiful. In this way, Lucian embodies his name.
(plus, can we be honest? NOBODY could play this role better than Dane Dehaan. Everything about him- from his slightly raspy voice, his childishly porcelain face to his piercing blue eyes with an underlying shrewd tinge- SCREAMS Lucian to me)
However, for all his illumining qualities, he, as a person, never revealed his own qualities. Not once did he compose any work of art- for all his expensive tastes, he never did create anything himself. He was so reluctant to write that he even refused to write his own deposition. [This makes me think that perhaps, in Lucien Carr's obituary, he was rightfully called:
"A literary lion who never roared"
His character was so guarded up he did not even reveal how he was as a lover. All love affairs in his life were incomplete, with him needing to run away from them. His academic vision was the only part of him we really saw. And more importantly, we later see his incapability to carry out anything to its end, and his tendency to leave things incomplete: he's only good at beginnings. This lends him the aura of a fallen angel.
Lucian's Character - A layered psyche:
It is no secret that Lucian isn't a straightforward character. He's a complicated character who has been shaped by past experiences and trauma, but he also manages to retain the charm of a mischievous school-boy, and prove to be quite surprising at times.
In moments such as the verandah outside Allen's house, Lucian's painfully human and empathetic: he's crying over his father leaving. And yet, in the scene where he's ousting Allen and barring him from accompanying them to Paris, he's positively cruel. This shows that Lucien is multi-faceted. And as per my observation, he's kind and soft when under the influence of Alcohol, while he's sharper when in his senses. Conclusion: he's true nature is being soft-hearted, which only surfaces when intoxicated, while his boundaries come up when sober. And this pattern of behaviour can be directly traced/sourced from his abuse.
He's so many things at the same time that he's often self-contradictory: he tells Allen that he wants his life to be filled with only first times, and he later realises that he's only good for beginnings; he has a vision but refuses to carry it out; he has talent and yet never exposes it; for all his talks of greatness and living a passionate and intense life, he runs away from any affair pertaining to love. When things got too capricious and unbearable, he tries to k*ll himself (on more than one occasion).
Surprising persona: In an interview with the Academy, Dane Dehaan mentioned how in real life, Lucian was as much of a complicated character. As revealed by Allen Ginsberg's diaries, Lucian was the type of person who'd stand on the bow of a boat and weigh it down just to know how it felt to be on a sinking ship; he would go to a restaurant and order the most expensive steak raw, just to throw it in the waitress' face; he'd literally bite the rim of a wine glass and chew on the glass pieces only to get a reaction from the onlooker - all these reveal how surprising and unpredictable his character was.
Abusive past: while at first Lucian seemed to me "an entitled peacock" , after digging a little deep, I realised just how much of this boy had been shaped due to trauma. David, who's initially portrayed just as an obsessed, possessive former lover, seemed bad enough. He does seem sketchy, but as Lucian and his friends continue to hang out with him and go to his place, I assumed at the very least there was some element of mutual understanding between the two. Even at that point, we just want to shove David at the edge of a cliff and stop him from further hindering Allen and Lucien's blooming love affair.
It is only toward the end that we're informed that David is actually a sexual predator. He met Lucian as the leader of a Boy-Scout program when Lucian was only 14. He groomed and seduced Lucian, and while it was never explicitly stated in the movie, there is little doubt that he elicited sexual favours from the boy. This was an outright criminal offence. An adult (or at the very least David must have been a late teenager) in a position of power seducing and grooming a 14 year old sounds dire warning bells in my ears! Can you even imagine what effect it must have had on young Lucian?!
Around the time, homosexuality was a criminal offence, and that itself is a perfectly good explanation on why many gay men chose to live their lives repressed and in the closet. Today, even thinking about how you could be jailed for a part of yourself that you had no control over makes my heart ache. It just is starkly and blatantly unfair. Think of Little Lucian growing up around this sort of mentality, and just naturally stamping down all his natural feelings of attraction. The boy also grew up without a father as he had left the family when Lucian was only four years old. Growing up without a male authority figure must have been difficult for him, and then he goes to this boy-scout camp and meets this older guy who gives him that sort of a male figure he can look up to, and before he knows it, he's in a trap. Even if it could have been that Lu developed feelings first for David, he would NEVER act on them unless encouraged/coaxed/groomed into doing so. David was predatory right from the start.
"I was just a kid, David , and you pulled me into your perverted mess!"
The whole affair must have left Lucian very confused and unsure of his feelings and just sick of it. At an age when he couldn't possibly have known better, he had been ensnared in a trap that he wouldn't be able to break free from years. The abuse might also lend insight as to why Lucian was intoxicated or stoned almost all the time. Substance abuse might have been his way to cope with his feelings. David was so oppressive that even when the boy wanted to get out of it, even after years of abuse, he just wouldn't let him go. He followed and stalked Lucian everywhere and made sure no one else got close to him- Class-A predator move. Things got so bad that the boy tried to kill himself! God, even writing about this feels awful.
Internalized Homophobia: This sort of abuse and stalking must have definitely been immensely traumatic. The relationship with David being his first one, he must have directly associated all homosexual encounters to be as oppressive and abusive as that with David, which further made him close in on himself and repress that part of himself. This could explain:-
Why he completely refused to speak about anything David-related even when he was faced with the prospect of going to jail
How he totally cut Allen off when he kissed him. He openly rejected Allen only when he realized that the latter could capitalize on his feelings and impulses.
David's abusive behaviour must have made Lucian repulsed about homosexuality in general (we see him call David "A Goddamn Fruit") and made him homophobic. It's no surprise he'd oppose Allen's version of events of the night, and especially when being called gay would result in him being accused of first-degree manslaughter.
Lucian sought to be viewed as heterosexual. Even though he definitely gave Allen some yellow signals, he's seen to be most comfortable in a setting where he's viewed as straight: he kisses a girl at the party just because he could, and later carelessly remarked how she tasted of "imported sophistication and domestic cigarettes" (GOD I LOVE THAT LINE); he feels outright disdain for anything labelled as queer; and in real life, Lucian straight up refused to talk anything at all about Allen or David for the rest of his life and literally asked for his name to be removed from Allen's collection of poems.
Till the very end, the shame and guilt of the abusive affair made him the walled-up, and partially secretive character he eventually became. He had been violated in a way which made him immensely fear intimacy (at least from his male counterparts) and made him unwilling to reveal any personal part of himself. And this very same fear also made him lose interest and run away from Allen the moment he understood things could get serious.
It was this accumulation of feelings of violation and shame and fear that became insurmountable and resulted in the murder of David Krammerer. As Lucian's son, Caleb Carr said once,
"The fact that he killed David with his Boy-Scout knife is no coincidence"
Lucian knew in that moment that to rid himself of all that abuse, stalking and oppression in general, he'd have to get rid of David in a permanent fashion. The movie did a wonderful job of portraying how this turn of events was more of a build-up than a sudden impulsive act, and this was done in small, one or two second-long frames. Even without knowing his predatory past history of David, we see how he's always an ominous presence lurking in the back. His apartment is one big party stage where everyone's allowed to get freaky, and while this wouldn't be alarming had he been a college-goer, but he's a whole ass professor who's encouraging youngsters to do drugs and get intoxicated and just get wild - MAJOR RED-FLAGS. These subtle clues are enough to make us want David to be eliminated in some way. Later, after Jack retrieves his cat from the oven, Lucian looks at a heavy-looking sack which shows his murderous intents escalating- and it gives us a hint that he might even be motivated to kill David in cold-blood.
The movie did a fantastic job of telling a true story of genuine intrigue and underlying mystery. The characters brought life to the story in the most sincere way, and coupled with amazing visuals, made it a savoury experience. And last but not the least, the actors were so good in their roles that they might have made this review a little biased on seeing the absolute best in them.
Thanks for reading :)