Streaming those "Beat" boys again: In BIG SUR Michael Polish takes a different tack to Kerouac

What with Howl, On the Road, Kill Your Darlings and just recently the James Broughton doc Big Joy under our belts, some of us may have had enough of the so-called "beat generation." But it would a shame to miss BIG SUR, the under-seen and quickly disappeared movie by Michael Polish about Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and a fellow new to me named Lew Welch that, in a certain fashion, proves the best of the lot. That fashion is not a popular one, however,  so watch this film with the understanding that it is basically a story of words and what writing does to and for Mr. Kerouac.The words are the important thing here -- more so than story, drama, conflict, and most anything else one usually finds in our favorite movies.

With this film Mr. Polish continues his 15-year career of making little-seen but occasionally commented-on small, independent films -- Twin Falls Idaho, Jackpot, Northfork, The Astronaut Farmer, among others -- that go their own (and his own) way, audiences be damned or entertained, as the case may be. Here, it seems that Polish wanted to place the words first and foremost and have all else -- especially visuals and performances -- follow from those words. The effect is alternately bracing and a little crazy-making because what's missing here is drama and conflict, though all else is in place.

Actually, the conflict is here, too, but it is all internalized within the character of Kerouac (very well played, by the way, by German-born international star Jean-Marc Barr, who has worked mostly in France, where he has acted, written, directed, produced, photographed and even edited films). While this internalization pretty much saps Big Sur of conventional "drama," it lets Kerouac's words take pride of place as few other movies have allowed.

Kerouac becomes a kind of narrator here, telling us his own story, and it turns out he's scared to death -- of death. His words become a kind of wall of blather against this fear. (And what words can't manage, liquor does the rest.)  It's all most impressive, moving and ridiculous, rather, I suspect, like the man himself.

Kerouac was sexy and sexual, impressive, intelligent, kind, caring and crazy, and so the other characters act as satellites circling him. Even, Cassady (as played by the always fine Josh Lucas, above, right), usually seen as Kerouac's sun, here takes a back seat to our boy. But by now, Neal's bloom may be beginning to fade a bit. Anthony Edwards is aces as Ferlinghetti, and as Welch, the more versatile than you'd imagine Patrick Fischler surprises -- and then some.

Balthazar Getty, Henry Thomas and John Robinson makes up the rest of the gang, with the women's roles entrusted to Kate Bosworth (above), Radha Mitchell (two photos above, with Lucas) and Stana Katic. Everyone is on their mark, but it M. Barr who nails the movie.

The look of the film is quite fine, too: cars, clothes, hairstyles -- everything brings back the 1950s, whether you liked 'em or not, and the location cinematography is utterly beautiful in high definition. Given the gorgeous Big Sur scenery, this should be a shoo-in, of course.

The movie is also homo-erotic aplenty, without being homosexual. Both Jack and Neal want each other's women, and in the case of Billie (Ms Bosworth), this is arranged.  I would not have missed this film, and I suspect others my age will find themselves held in rapt attention. So we owe Mr. Polish a debt of gratitude for concentrating on Kerouac's words.

Big Sur is available now via Netflix streaming, and on DVD. It is also for sale (though not, it seems, for rental) via Amazon Instant Video.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS: It's Ginsberg time again in John Krokidas' dark, sad, funny "other" fest

What an unusual and surprisingly successful piece of work is KILL YOUR DARLINGS (not to be mistaken for that very interesting but not finally very successful film from 2006 starring Lolita Davidovich and Andreas Wilson). This is at least the fourth movie in as many years to tackle the subject of Allen Ginsberg and his poet pals of the "beat generation," as it was so-called. Oddly enough, all four films are quite good, whether Ginsberg is front and center (as here and in Howl) or simply part of the ensemble (as in On the Road or the fine documentary The Beat Hotel).

As directed by a young  fellow who seems to have come directly from out-of-the-blue, John Krokidas (this is his first full-lengther, after making a couple of shorts), the movie is quite stunning -- fortunately less for any of its individual "effects" that for how very well the filmmaker has woven them all into his dark tale of life at Columbia University circa 1944 among a group of people who can most effectively be described as "the other." Not only were several of them homosexual (at at time in our history when this really was the love that dare not speak its name), these outsiders were champing at the bit of every-thing remotely traditional -- from sex to poetry to the classroom canon. Struggling to create new art forms and life/love relationships, they were, to be sure, poseurs of a sort (weren't we all--isn't that part of growing up?), yet a number of them also possessed a good deal of talent.

Of the group we see here, Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe, at left), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster) have the real thing, while two others -- a young man named Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) and his older "pal" David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall) -- are more provocateurs/
hangers-on.

Because Carr is so immediately alluring, full of himself and hugely attractive to Ginsberg, it takes awhile for the budding poet (and us) to begin to notice the flush behind the flash.

It helps, too, that Mr. DeHaan (above) gives such a wired, full-out performance. Despite Mr. Radcliffe's star-power and popularity, DeHaan's is the pivotal role in the film, and the actor makes it work by initially seducing us with his gorgeous, energetic facade, and then slowly letting the cracks appear.

Not that Radcliffe himself isn't just fine as the young Ginsberg. The actor seems here bent on dislodging a certain Mister Potter as far out of our memory as possible, and he does just that. As a young man just beginning to discover his talent and sexual proclivities, he's moment-to-moment as truthful as you could want -- whether in his interaction with his peers or his parents (that's the ever-remarkable Jennifer Jason Leigh (above, as mom) and a very surprising David Cross (reminding us of a young Lee Wilkoff), shown below, with Radcliffe, as dad.

Mr. Foster, below, always good, gets the look and just-slightly-off-beat/off-key behavior of Burroughs so right that it took me awhile to realize who it was playing this particular role.

Returning perhaps to his Six Feet Under roots, Mr. Hall (below), who is most likely at this point too be remembered for his performances there and in Dexter, makes his needy, angry Kammerer character a very sad and memorable one.

If Mr. Huston's Kerouac (shown below, left, with Elizabeth Olsen as his girlfriend) pales a bit beside that of Sam Riley's in On the Road, it's only because Riley received much more screen time.  Here, Kerouac seems (probably correctly, too) more acted-upon than a self-starter.

Krokidas and his ace crew have brought back the 1940s in beautiful, if dark, fashion. The sets, costumes, cars, and pursuits of the characters -- mostly drugs, booze, sex and writing -- are all on the mark, genuinely interesting and believable, too. The screenplay by Krokidas and Austin Bunn is also first-rate in its ability to glance off things quickly and efficiently while leading us exactly where we need to go.

How the filmmaker delivers certain hallucinatory scenes of drug/booze-fueled highs are quite affecting and unusual. In fact, the entire movie could be called affecting and unusual, especially in the manner in which it tackles the subject of being an "other" when that meant living such a highly proscribed life that it was no wonder that Ginsberg -- in his poetry as in all else -- simply had to break free.

How and why he does this, Krokidas and his crack cast help show us so very well that Kill Your Darlings becomes one of this year's best films.

From Sony Pictures Classics and running a surprisingly swift 104 minutes, the movie opens this Wednesday, October 16, in New York City (the Walter Reade Theater and the Sunshine Cinema) and in Los Angeles (at The Landmark).

Alan Govenar's THE BEAT HOTEL takes us back to bohemian/beatnik Paris of the 50s

Do the names Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and William Burroughs set your heart aflutter? (My upstairs neighbor runs the other direction when he hears the roster.) For some, these are/were the kind of guys you might like to read but wouldn't want to live with. You get the chance to do the latter, possibly as closely as you'd care to, in the new documen-tary THE BEAT HOTEL that takes us back to the beatnik/bohemian Paris of the period between 1957 - 1963 and to the shabby (but hardly chic) little hotel where they, and others of their ilk, resided.

Directed by Alan Govenar (shown at left) and with some smart animation by Blas Garcia and Alan Hatchett (who also edited the film), and some even funnier drawings from Elliot Rudie (like the one of Burroughs, below), the documentary is a lot of fun and remarkably alive. This is due in no small measure to the wonderful photography by Scottish shutterbug Harold Chapman (who lived in the hotel during this time and to a large extent narrates the movie) -- bringing back the shadow side of the "city of lights" from a half-century past. Chapman's moody, lovely, on-the-fly photos capture the people and the time with artful, seemingly artless ease, and one of the most interesting (even to a non-photographer like TrustMovies) sections of the film involves Chapman's explanation of how, first step to last, he created what he calls, quite charmingly and rightly, his highly original kind of "dustbin photography."

Probably but a very few of my readership will be old enough to recall the era of Europe on $5 a Day (Arthur Frommer's series of wildly popular travel books that actually began in 1957, the same year as does this film). If it seems impossible to imagine now -- what with inflation, the Euro and the exchange rate practically reversed from the time in which it favored Americans traveling abroad rather than Europeans coming over here -- one really could do Europe in this affordable manner. So when the movie tells us that the "beats" who stayed at this cheap, no-name hotel paid but 10 francs per day (then, the equivalent of about 50 cents), we can only marvel. Of course, this got you a very tiny room: The small hotel had but one bath for everyone and hot water maybe two-to-three times per week.

The hotel's proprietress, Madame Rochou (that's she behind the bar, slightly to the right) -- who served sandwiches to the local police, mostly to keep them off track of the drugs and local prostitutes (some of whom the police themselves made use of) -- appeared to have an appreciation of artists and no interest at all in their art. But she did have the need to create, the narrator recalls, "a little resistance movement against all authority." Which fit perfectly with the needs of the her hotel's occupants. Chatty and all-over-the-place, the movie sometimes seems as discombobulated as were the hotels' residents. But it is always interesting.

Along the way we get a slice of these artists' works -- the poem by Ginsberg (shown at right) to his Aunt Rose, a history of Burroughs' Naked Lunch (or, as we learn, due to a Freudian typo, "Naked Lust") and lots more. I usually resent "re-enactments" in documentaries (unless like James Marsh, one does them so well that they fool me). Here, the re-enactments are done with enough wit and charm -- plus black-and-white photography and actors who look like their subjects -- that these engage us surprisingly well. One, in which Burroughs (shown below) and his associates put on a "magic" act, using light and film to make the writer disappear, is a real delight.

Some critics dismissed the movie as yet another tired attempt at nostalgia. This is simply not true. Perhaps the real audience for this documentary are senior citizens like myself, who remember this time, and its people, and its artistic protest with some fondness, even if we ourselves were nowhere near the creative front of the avant-garde. Thanks to the work of Mr. Govenar and his crew, and to the photos and narration of Mr. Chapman, we can understand this time/place/cast from a point of genuine nearness and the kind of personal angle that, until now, we've never experienced.

The Beat Hotel, 82 minutes, from First Run Features, opened theatrically yesterday here in New York City at the Cinema Village.  To view all currently scheduled upcoming playdates, with cities and theaters, click here.  Knowing FRF, you'll also be able to catch up with the film on DVD, eventually.