BEAT (2000) *1/2 Leaves you wondering.is it possible to make the beat writers look like a duller bunch? Probably, but not easy. There is no evidence at all of what made them interesting. I mean, these were people with such a sensational sense of freedom that trashed boundaries and social mores that had existed for hundreds of generations! Ok, maybe they weren't the only ones, but they were the ones that lit the fuse of a social bomb that blew away an awful lot of hypocrisy and counterproductive dogma. But here they're just very pathetic little people with a lot of problems, which are incidentally disjointed from even the script. They drink incessantly but no one ever gets a hangover (and can you imagine anyone duller to drink with than the people on the screen?!). The drug scenes are incredibly mellow and more revolve around who's going to be each other's boyfriend. William Burroughs' and the others (well, not Allen Ginsburg) very occasionally say somewhat interesting things, but without any conviction. I would have thought that casting Kiefer Sutherland and Courtney Love in this would be a great idea, but the problems aren't entirely in a lifeless script. Kiefer, bless him, has gone a long way to create a character. I don't know enough about Burroughs to definitely say that it isn't him, but I doubt it and I hope not. It's certainly not a character with any spark or life force or genius. From what little I've read I at least remember Burroughs as being stridently individualistic and alone. I know even less about the Courtney Love character, but the depiction is an unsteady one of a brighter than average woman obsessing on about the least of her thoughts, because they strike her as artsy. Courtney's not as consistently bad as Kiefer, not consistently anything. The question that Kiefer's performance brings up, as contrasted to Ron Livingston, is this: is it worse to try valiantly and miss so horribly as to warrant sly amusement from the psychologically pummelling classes, or is it worse to kill off a great character by standing around onscreen like a boring oaf? I'd vote for the oaf and Livinston's portrayal of Ginsberg is no more than that. I know about Ginsberg, I've read Ginsberg, I've seen footage of Ginsberg, and all you had to do was take one look at the man to realize that he was a raving genius. Yes, emphasis maybe even on raving, but genius. Livingston's guy is a door stop in danger of becoming a mop. So these were all interesting people and I'm interested in knowing more about them. Unless they were really like this.
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