Beat surrender

Suddenly, it seems everyone wants to put Jack Keroauc and his pals onscreen, or turn the story of the Beat writers into a cinematic arc.

There’s been a bumper crop of movies about the Beat Generation lately, since 2012’s On the Road brought Jack Kerouac and his constellation of literary pals to the big (art house) screen. On the Road took decades to get made, with movie rights passed along from studio to studio and potential directors Francis Coppola before finding a modicum of faithfulness in Walter Salles’ adaptation.

Now, suddenly, it seems like everyone wants to put Jack Keroauc and his pals onscreen, or turn the story of the Beat writers into a cinematic arc. You’ve got Kill Your Darlings, which turns the focus onto Allen Ginsberg and his early years at Columbia, which included some sticky business over a murder committed by college pal Lucien Carr (droopy-eyed Dane DeHaan). Daniel Radcliffe dons the dark horn rims and curly hair, stepping into the role of Ginsberg, a young soon-to-be poet who has a father’s literary mantle (fellow poet Louis Ginsberg played by David Cross), a mother given to schizophrenia (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and his own homosexuality to come to terms with. Radcliffe does a decent job of making us forget Harry Potter (a job it seems he must redo again and again with each role, speaking of killing your darlings). He’s guileless and yet driven, spurred on by Lucien Carr’s poetic manifesto of a “New Vision” that abandons meter, rhyme and the usual old guard culprits. How they accomplish this by sneaking into the Columbia archives à la Animal House and displaying copies of Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer and other banned books is questionable. On the periphery are familiar Ginsberg pals William Burroughs (whose cut-up composition method shows up a decade too early here) and Kerouac (played more or less as a muscle head).

This is an art house literary flick with shades of teen and homoerotic appeal. From the Cabin in the Woods-like tabloid title credit, to the Bloc Party and TV On The Radio pumping on the soundtrack, it’s clear director John Krokidas is intent on establishing a style that’s part retro and part indie youth party. Gauzy downtown Manhattan parties where the obligatory tea is smoked and Benzedrine tablets mashed into coffee cups serves as Beat atmosphere, though Kill Your Darlings tends to keep its focus on story and plot, almost turning the events of Carr’s act of violence (he stabbed a lover whom he just wasn’t into anymore, then sank the body, weighted with stones, in the Hudson) into a murder mystery for Ginsberg to solve. That’s a bit unnecessary, as the events are interesting enough without going the Sherlock route.

What emerges is a tale in which Ginsberg’s sexuality is awakened, as well as a bourgeois fear of going too far to protect someone who may be equally culpable for all the chaos that forms around him. Even Burroughs — no stranger to murder charges, having shot his own wife Joan in an ill-fated William tell incident — tells Ginsberg to let Carr take the rap on his own.

Sadly, while Carr appears to have been a charismatic figure, a lightning rod for action not unlike Neal Cassady was for Jack Kerouac, he lacked the ability or discipline to create lasting art. Unless you consider the chaos swirling around him to be art. The movie tells us Ginsberg eventually dedicated his first collection of poems, Howl, to Carr, who asked that this dedication be removed in further editions. Carr somehow managed to live to a ripened age, married with kids, until 2005.

Like Ginsberg, Kerouac had his own catalyst, Neal Cassady, to ignite his literary success. That path to success was extensively covered in Salles’ On the Road, but the flip side — how fame can be a monster that leaves you empty and lost — comes through loud and clear in Michael Polish’s Big Sur, based on Keroauc’s 1962 novel about several weeks spent hanging out in Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s coastal California cabin. Well, not exactly “loud and clear,” because this is a quiet movie with “art house” stamped all over it, from the unpunctuated voiceover to the directionless narrative, in which Keroauc’s unplotted, confessional novel becomes an unplotted, confessional movie. Yet it’s an interesting peek at Kerouac’s later years, immersed in alcoholism, still searching for cosmic meaning or the “golden eternity” that had begun to lose its luster as worldwide fame took over after On the Road’s publication in 1957. In fact, it’s a movie that culminates in Kerouac (played with sad-eyed ennui by French actor Jean-Marc Barr) having a nervous breakdown amid satanic hallucinations, possibly brought on by constant drinking. “Kids who read my books think I’m still 26 years old, hitchhiking across the country,” Kerouac prefaces, “when I’m actually 40 years old, tired and jaded.” Finding little spark in the young generation’s embrace of his message (much in the way J.D. Salinger seemed to derive little satisfaction from the enduring popularity of Catcher in the Rye), Kerouac finds himself crossing the country to San Francisco, where the Beat parties already seem like a movie parody of Beat parties. The distraction of fame doesn’t seem to keep Kerouac from the bottle, where he spends more and more time stewing, so pal Ferlinghetti coaxes him to Big Sur, with its awe-inspiring cliffs and dramatic breakers and sun-dappled pine trees. This allows for some beautiful California cinematography, and the film at times threatens to become a travelogue for California tourism, despite the frequent Kerouac passages recited over the soundtrack.

Despite the beautiful scenery, all Kerouac can ruminate on is death, even as blonde Beat follower Kate Bosworth attempts to get him to embrace life again (mostly through sex). Instead, all Jack notices is a dead sea otter, a dead mouse, a garbage pit by the cabin that’s the exact size of a child’s corpse. Clearly, Jack could have used some rehab or AA at this point, as his morbid obsessions turn into scary death visions while undergoing delirium tremens. Yet the Beat manifesto seems to have precluded direct intervention, instead allowing friends to follow their own bliss — or oblivion — only offering gentle reminders from the community of friendship available out there.

It makes the Beat movement seem like a fairly selfish endeavor, a blind alleyway where decisions are made in a private moral abyss. No wonder Jack’s embrace of Buddhism, mixed with his childhood Catholicism, couldn’t stand up to the void of eternity, visually reinforced by the overwhelming cliffs and breakers of Big Sur, and by meditative music from The National on the soundtrack. Jack eventually goes bonkers, lashing out at friends and lovers, his courage in life dealt what would become a fatal blow by age, mortal fear, and the brutal daily requirements of drinking. He died in his mother’s house in Florida, age 47. Big Sur offers a quiet if troubling look at the tail end of the Beat generation’s promise, though arguably its influence is still being felt in worldwide culture, certainly among indie bands and the art house movie circuit.