Broken Tower [DVD] [2011] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I am confident that many people who will review James Franco's "The Broken Tower" will declare it a cinematic marvel. I am equally sure that its detractors will call it an incomprehensible mess. This self-consciously arty exploration of the life and work of poet Hart Crane seems destined to divide its audience, and I suspect reactions will be intense and passionate. I guess I'll straddle the middle ground somewhat and call "The Broken Tower" an interesting experiment. Of course, if you are a fervent Franco fan--you will undoubtedly seek out this project as he is its star, director and writer. Its appeal to others, however, may be considerably more limited. On the one hand, the film's visual aesthetic is undeniably arresting. Franco borrows techniques from many of the masters in developing the film's beautiful black-and-white palette and sets up interesting and unconventional shots. From a technical standpoint, the film has a lot going for it. On the other hand, the film is notably less successful at getting you to understand its subject. This, for me (as someone who is familiar with Hart Crane), may be the movie's fatal undoing.

The movie is not concerned with being a traditional biography. It is structured in a series of vignettes (labeled as voyages). Some of these interludes are evocative, some are rather obtuse. With a subject that is so inherently dramatic and tumultuous, it is quite unexpected how little of that drama actually makes it into the story. Many of the segments offer mundane slice-of-life glimpses of Crane, some offer brief outbursts usually without context, and many offer reading after reading of Crane's work and/or letters. I appreciate that Franco wants to honor Crane by using his actual words, but the modernist poems are served in rather inflectionless vocal renderings over stagnant visual imagery. Take, in contrast, the last time Franco embodied a famous poet (Ginsberg in Howl). "Howl" made a point of bringing the poetry to life with various stylistic experiments. Here, I never thought that Crane's pieces were allowed to sing.

There is no denying that Crane is a fascinating subject, if not a particularly popular one. Committing suicide at age 32 (in 1932), Crane was an idealist, a homosexual, a revolutionary, and a troubled soul. His most ambitious work, The Bridge, is an epic endeavor that is still considered quite influential today. But if you know nothing about Hart Crane, "The Broken Tower" does not seek to elucidate its subject matter. Franco is so concerned about stripping down conventional film narrative and story that the viewing experience can be a challenge. He chooses random images (one sex scene, in particular, seems like pure provocation) to make an artful, though emotionally distant, experiment of a film. While I appreciate the gamble (some of which works, some strikes as self-indulgent), it left a void at the center of the film for me. Without knowing Crane, I couldn't really care about him. So even though I admired some of the filmmaking choices, I'm not sure the movie ever fulfilled the promise of its fascinating subject.

As I said in the opener, some might decry this a masterpiece and some might call it utter nonsense. For me, the movie ends up being more about Franco trying to define himself as an iconoclastic filmmaker than it does about the actual Hart Crane. For a very specialized audience, I would only recommend "Broken Tower" to a select few. KGHarris, 3/12.

THE BROKEN TOWER will likely never be on the list of best films made, so why award it five stars? Because this very fine art piece is the result of the devotion of James Franco to his craft. He worked directly with Boston College professor Paul Mariani, the author of a half dozen volumes of poetry, as well as several biographies of 20th-century American poets, including William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell: Franco based THE BROKEN TOWER on Mariani's similarly titled 2000 biography of Crane.

The subject of the film is the life and creative genius of Hart Crane, (July 21, 1899 - April 27, 1932) an American poet who found both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that is difficult, highly stylized, and very ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem in the vein of The Waste Land that expressed something more sincere and optimistic than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot's poetry. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has come to be seen as one of the most influential poets of his generation.

James Franco wrote the screenplay based on book by Paul Mariani, directed and edited the film and acted the main role of Hart Crane. Crane was a nearly disconsolate man who refused to follow his wealthy father's business, longing instead to be a poet. Born in Ohio he traveled to New York (the place he always considered home), to Cuba, and to Paris searching for his poetic voice. He was a gay man in an era when his lifestyle was always under threat, he had a lover (Vince Jolivette) early on in an affair that was filled with passion, and in his travels he seemed to find his true love in Emile (Michael Shannon) that endured the manic highs and depressive, death-haunted lows that befell this self -destructive visionary poet. He attempted suicide at least once and finally ended his life in a successful suicide at the young age of 32.

Franco breathes life into Hart Crane, offering more understanding of this enigmatic genius than we have ever been afforded. In making the film Franco uses his younger brother Dave Franco to depict the young Hart and selects his small cast wisely. The film is completely in black and white and is in the format of `Voyages' - each voyage takes us through a distinct part of Hart's life: his gay loves, his poetry readings, his forays to Cuba and to Paris and his lonely hours of sitting before an old typewriter where he created the major epics of poetry that remain some of the finest ever written by an American poet.

The film is choppy, not unlike the manner in which Hart's mind worked in bits and pieces, always immersed in thoughts of the sea, the labor of common man, of the Brooklyn Bridge which would play the major role in his most famous epic poem THE BRIDGE, and of the fellow artists whose work he so admired. There is a strange musical score (the work of Neil Benezra) which is long on choral chanting, and a quality of gritty cinematography achieved by Christiana Vorn. The technique of the making of this film matches the vision of James Franco in continuing to visit the lives of isolated geniuses. The dialogue, what little there is, is Crane's poetry as spoken by Franco.

For many this film will seem self-indulgent on Franco's part. And perhaps it partially is. But the flavor of this gay American poet of the 1920s and the reflections of America at that time ring true. THE BROKEN TOWER is not a biopic of Hart Crane. It is an elegy. Grady Harp, February 12

I must confess that I ordered The Broken Tower for the wrong reason, because I read that James Franco did something in it that gay men do all the time but non-porn actors NEVER do on film, even openly gay actors in flagrantly gay movies. That bit was kind of a bust, but I ended up liking the movie anyway, for less sleazy reasons.

I know next to nothing about Hart Crane, and I don't know a lot more after having watched this movie. It's not a biography by any means. My best guess would be that it's James Franco's impression of what Crane was like, and that's what makes it interesting.

It's oddly directed, with very many long, handheld, extreme closeups, filmed from about chest-level, of Franco (as Crane) walking the streets of various cities, usually looking up from just under his chin, but sometimes looking at the back of his head. That motif repeats often.

At least 70% of the spoken lines in the movie are Franco (always as Crane) reading Crane's poetry: one long scene reciting to an audience in a formal setting, and much poetry read as a sort of narration as various events unfold on screen. This movie definitely is not for people who hate poetry - Crane's poetry in particular.

It's definitely not for people who need action, romance, likable characters, or a clear story line in movies. It's for people who can sit through a 108-minute experimental movie without any particular expectation as to what it's going to be like.

It's for people who appreciate enthusiasm and passion in artists (I'm talking mainly about Franco, but it applies to Crane too, I suppose) even if the result is not particularly coherent. It's obvious that this was a labor of love for Franco, and that more than anything else is what makes it interesting.