The Broken Tower (2011)

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Poet Hart Crane was born to a well-to-do businessman and his wife in 1899, and his parents would later divorce. He grew up in the Roaring Twenties, and would supplement his small writing income by doing copywriting in the burgeoning advertising field- a job he hated. He was gay, or at least bisexual, drank too much, and jumped from a ship and drowned in the Gulf of Mexico when he was only 32. I didn't know James Franco made this film until I recognized the title from a book about Crane. Franco seems obsessed with poets- between this film, "Howl," and a delayed but talked-about biopic of Charles Bukowski, he seems obsessed with poets I am obsessed with. I had high hopes sitting down to this, and after viewing the documentary "Hart Crane: An Exegesis," I was ready to let Franco show me Hart Crane as he saw him.

Franco wrote, directed, and stars in the project, apparently a film to fulfill a university thesis. Crane's poetry can be complex and difficult, I don't pretend to understand a lot of what I have read by him, but Franco makes the mistake of writing and directing an equally difficult film. In the film's case, I "got" what Franco was trying to do, I am saying it was the wrong approach to Crane's life. Franco casts his younger brother Dave as a younger Hart, or Harold as he was born, and their mother as Hart's mother. Michael Shannon is Emile, the love of Hart's life and subject of some of his poetry. The problem is that Shannon's scenes number about four, as do his lines of dialogue, and the viewer doesn't discover his name until the end credits. Crane's parents also get shorted, for being such big influences in his life. Crane's relationship with Malcolm Cowley's ex-wife (Stacey Miller) is also touched upon but not explored.

The film's running time is listed as ninety-nine minutes, but other sources and my old notes put this at one hundred and ten minutes; so what do we get in that running time? Franco does do a brave thing- exhibiting an eleven minute poetry reading just before the midpoint of the film. The black-and-white photography, with the exception of a color sequence in a cathedral, is nice. The muted sad jazz of the time provides an excellent soundtrack to Crane's moods, even in the lighter moments when he is with friends, and drunk. It is hard to make a compelling film about someone sitting at a desk and typing, but Franco tries. The film is chaptered by title cards enumerating Crane's life "voyages", and this does help follow what was going on in his life to a certain extent.

However, Franco as Crane walks. A lot. Too much. There is so much footage of Franco walking around, I began to make morbid jokes about Crane's leg strength when he took his final plunge into the big drink. This padding technique went beyond experimental or difficult and into tedium. Franco plays Crane as a spoiled genius, but he throws one too many fits and I didn't like Crane as Franco saw him. He looks nothing like Crane, either, and a scene where Crane performs a sex act on a lover seems out of place and exploitative- it's obvious Franco wanted to do something shocking to get the film talked about. I was relieved when it was over, and disappointed that Franco couldn't get his admiration for the writer on film without alienating the same audience that finds Crane's writing unfathomable.

Next time, I hope Franco's desire to make an arty film about an artist is tempered by a desire to make that artist accessible to the viewer. Not knowing anything about Crane, and watching this, would make me shun Crane's work. "The Broken Tower" turns into a broken film.

Stats:
(2011) 99 min. (* 1/2) out of five stars
-Directed by James Franco
-Written by James Franco based on the book by Paul Mariani
-Cast: James Franco, Michael Shannon, Stacey Miller, Dave Franco, Betsy Franco, Richard Abate, Paul Mariani, Shandor Garrison, Dylan Goodwin, John Morrow, Ivo Juhani, Vince Jolivette, Fallon Goodsen
(Unrated)