No. 64 The Broken Tower (2011) 51 of 100

 

Here’s tough watch if ever there was one – James Franco’s mostly black and white film school project about an obscure (to me at any rate) gay American poet in the 1930s.

I quite like Franco with stuff like ‘Why Him’, ‘This is the End’ and the TV show ‘The Deuce’ all excellent pieces of work. He also made ‘The Disaster Artist’ in which he had a laugh at Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’. Funny, as it was you never saw the bold Tommy giving a blow job to a (probably) fake male phallus!

The film charts the troubled life of poet Harold ‘Call me Hart’ Crane. Told in 12 chapters or ‘Voyages’ the film is a pretentious collection of poetry readings and self indulgent scenes that go on forever and go nowhere.

Hart struggles for his craft and has to beg money to survive. He works in advertising and gets his kicks down at the docks with sailors. One of his lovers is Mr Shannon with whom Franco has a minute long snogging session with before they get down to the real action. Shannon is the man, as always, and although he only gets a couple of lines he does stand out.

The film is punctuated with long readings of Hart’s impenetrable verse with one endless scene having Franco read out a long poem to a bored audience and to a fixed camera. There are also embarrassing scenes where Hart rubs up and down on a mariachi band and one where he just yells and gibbers on for an age.

I didn’t really learn much about Hart apart from him being troubled and that he’s not shy about showing his affections in a parked car. The scene were he goes down on a fellow was explicit and not really necessary in the context of the film. The scene were Hart kills himself at the end cuts away presumably so we don’t see the full horror of his demise. I’m not equating blow jobs with killing oneself, it just seemed strange that restraint was shown in some place and not in others.

The film was a school project for Franco so the jerky camera movements and dull direction were forgivable. The film however had no narrative and just jumped about with scenes from Hart’s life. Caption cards came up for each ‘Voyage’ and these listed what was going to happen in the following scenes. I guess Franco missed the ‘show, don’t tell’ day at class.

At nearly two hours this one was a real grind to get through and, although I’m sure it was a worthy artistic endeavour, there was no entertainment value here whatsoever. I guess a grim and troubled life deserves a grim and troubled feature!

When is Shannon-On? - 55.30

Outcome? Probably mourning his pal Hart

Film 1/5

Shannon Stars 2/5