X
- 2011
- Not Rated
- Focus World
- 1 h 39 m
- 2011
- Not Rated
- Focus World
- 1 h 39 m
Summary A biography of American poet Hart Crane who committed suicide at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.
Directed By: James Franco
Written By: Paul Mariani, James Franco
- 2011
- Not Rated
- Focus World
- 1 h 39 m
- 2011
- Not Rated
- Focus World
- 1 h 39 m
The Broken Tower
46
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
Summary A biography of American poet Hart Crane who committed suicide at the age of 32 by jumping off the steamship SS Orizaba.
Directed By: James Franco
Written By: Paul Mariani, James Franco
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
46
17% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
75% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
8% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
46
17% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
75% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
8% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
The Broken Tower is a wonderful labour of passion and love for this incredible artist and his broken life and it could not have been a more perfect way to encapsulate the incredibly obscure and fantastic artist that is Hart Crane.
The Broken Tower feels unique as a young man’s tribute to an adventuresome, doomed soul.
Despite Franco’s laudable desire to shake up a stodgy genre, his film could have done with more life, and less art.
It’s tonally flat and a little too impressed with its own elliptical construction. Yet there’s something about Franco’s desire to escape the straitjacket of the biopic’s pat psychologizing and greatest-hits structure that makes his film feel at least honest in its missteps.
Despite the highly mobile and often arresting work of cinematographer Christina Voros, The Broken Tower is not a heady experience like many of the semi-experimental 1960s films he emulates. Instead, it's mostly a tedious chore, much akin to listening poetry you don't much like.
Franco’s rather flat narration doesn’t do justice to Crane’s verse, but he is a charismatic onscreen presence.
It plays like unwitting art-house self-parody from a narcissist who takes himself, and his brooding subject matter, way too seriously.
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