Beat

The early years of the Beats – the 1950s culture rebels and artists who challenged the complacency of America – is told in this stylish drama. The story focuses primarily on the tangled relationships between William S. Burroughs (Kiefer Sutherland), his wife Joan (Courtney Love), a young Allen Ginsberg (Ron Livingston) and Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus), a handsome rogue and eventual muse for several of them.

The film begins in Joan's New York apartment in 1944. It's the central meeting place for Jack Kerouac and the others, all of who lazily hang out in a Benzedrine, booze and smoke-filled world of alternating boredom and excitement. But their group is left to scatter after Lucien kills an insistent male admirer. Flash forward several years later to Mexico City where the homosexual Burroughs (wonderfully played by a sonorous, deep-voiced, suit-and-tie wearing Sutherland) is now in an unlikely marriage with the witty, but unfulfilled Joan (Burroughs: "Too bad you're not a man." Joan: "Ah, Bill, nobody's perfect."). As Burroughs goes off with a twinky male hustler, Joan is joined up with a visiting Ginsberg and Lucien. The three embark on a journey through central Mexico to visit a dormant volcano – a journey filled with feelings of longing, jealousy, misplaced love and creative urges. The story – loosely based on real events – takes a turn for the worse when Burroughs and his wife reunite – if only briefly to play their fateful game of William Tell. A jazzy, evocative film that captures a long-gone world and hints at the passions that killed off one of them and creatively sparked the others.

Raymond Murray