Just attended the premier of The Broken Tower at the LA Film Festival and, once again, James Franco makes brave choices and produces a beautiful film. The camera work, editing, score, and the actors' performances, sustain a sometimes difficult story with elegance, honesty, and passion.
Set against the backdrop of 1920's New York, Paris, Cuba, and Mexico, The Broken Tower succeeds in merging two disparate art forms, film and poetry, to propel the narrative. There's also a lot of silence in this film where we are allowed to see Crane's world as through his eyes. Elegaic sequences are punctuated with cuts to black and the spare and subtle soundtrack perfectly matches the storytelling.
I admit to knowing nothing about Hart Crane before tonight's screening but I left wanting to read his poems and letters myself.
Thank you, Mr. Franco,
wlm
