Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke shines in Blue Moon, Richard Linklater's poetic portrayal of lyricist Lorenz Hart's final years. Rather than a standard biopic, the film unfolds as a lyrical reflection on genius, loneliness, and self-destruction. Hawke captures Hart's brilliance and fragility with moving subtlety, while Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley lend depth and emotional balance. Rich in nostalgia and artistry, Blue Moon resonates with anyone who loves Broadway's golden era, New York's melancholy charm, and the bittersweet cost of creativity. I would recommend this movie to fans of Ethan Hawke. This films touches on unrequited love, alcoholism and how that hurts your public life. It is about how self destruction can effect you in many ways.

Ethan Hawke really gets to show off his theater chops in what's essentially a one-man show about Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, trying to remain relevant to any who'll listen one night in 1943 at Sardi's. But despite the witticisms and urbanity Hawke is essentially one-note in his patter, and you eventually start to feel like Sarah Connor's dream in T2, clinging to a chain-link fence and being flailed to the bone by his nuclear, non-stop desperation. It's nice he and Linklater have a longtime devotion to each other and have stretched out into this new territory for their as always dialogue-heavy collaborations, but you'll be heading to the bar for some welcome cirossis long before little Lorenz corners you with his next needy, horrifying salvo of yammering.

Soon after I began my freshman year at George Mason University in the mid-1990s, a new book titled THE COMPLETE LYRICS OF LORENZ HART entered the GMU library's collection. Through this and similar books I (who was already a musical theatre fan) became particularly interested in the Broadway musicals of the 1910s through the early 1940s; among the lyricists of that period, my favorite was Lorenz Hart whose collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers commenced in 1925. From such Rodgers and Hart recordings as the 1983 revival cast CD of ON YOUR TOES and the 1989 studio cast CD of BABES IN ARMS, I formed an impression of Hart the lyricist as equally witty to Cole Porter yet melancholier and more self-deprecating than the suave Porter ever was. These qualities of Hart's style seemed to stem from his perceived personal troubles: the quintessential outsider, he was Jewish (which would have made him an outcast in certain non-theatrical circles), short, homely, an alcoholic, and perpetually unlucky in love. While Hart unsuccessfully pursued many women, he was rumored to be gay-a rumor he himself neither confirmed nor denied-as well as something of a voyeur. The same emotional baggage that made Hart's private life miserable makes him a natural movie character; of the two movies that have dramatized Hart's life, 2025's BLUE MOON is the darker and more thought-provoking film.

Whereas 1948's WORDS AND MUSIC (an MGM production with Mickey Rooney as Lorenz Hart) surveyed Hart's heyday as a lyricist, BLUE MOON shows him on a particular night in 1943, the final year of his life. Having ceased to work with Richard Rodgers after a disagreement, he attends the premiere of OKLAHOMA!, Rodgers' first hit musical with his new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. This rather brave act of Hart's is undermined by his churlish, sour attitude at Sardi's Restaurant where most of the film is set; as he waits for Rodgers and Hammerstein and their guests to arrive for the opening-night celebration, Hart denigrates OKLAHOMA! To anyone who will listen-namely, a bartender who tries not to serve him alcohol and a young pianist who is on leave from military duty in the ongoing World War. When Rodgers, et al. Do pour in, much of Hart's cynicism vanishes and we see how desperate he is to reconcile with Rodgers and resume their collaboration. We also see how desperate he is for one last chance at romance when Elizabeth Weiland, a blonde Yale theatre student whom he has been "mentoring," arrives for a rendezvous with the sadly washed-up middle-aged lyricist.

BLUE MOON is extremely well acted, with Ethan Hawke giving the performance of a lifetime as Hart. At times the screenplay seems less like a movie and more like a theatre script-one that contains, in my opinion, far more profanity than is necessary to convey that Hart is a wag and is bitter about the fact that Hammerstein has replaced him. Perhaps the screenplay's best aspect is that it offers a convincing counterpoint to Hart's complaint that OKLAHOMA! Is too corny to be great art, when Rodgers argues (I'm paraphrasing here), "Well, but the audience and most of the critics adored the show. Who are you to say that they don't know a good musical when they see one?" To be sure, the supposedly maudlin OKLAHOMA! Contains considerable darkness in the character of Jud, an outcast who might be said to resemble Hart in some ways. Though the movie never mentions this as a possibility, I wonder if Hart in real life saw something of himself in Jud and then sought to hide this recognition behind vehement criticism of OKLAHOMA! (Here I'm assuming that the actual Lorenz Hart disliked the show; I had always heard that he loved it-but, as he does in BLUE MOON, he may just have been concealing his dislike before Rodgers so as not to appear jealous of Hammerstein.) Regardless, I feel that a lesson BLUE MOON aims to teach is that one's artistic judgment ought ideally to be kept free of personal biases.

Although I am not at all sorry I saw it, BLUE MOON struck me as too relentlessly negative in tone to be a movie I'd want to watch multiple times. I was going to say that I would have preferred to see a modern film about Hart when he and Rodgers were writing hit musicals; but even a movie of this kind could not possibly avoid dealing with the addictions that, for example, compelled Rodgers to lock Hart in his room at New Jersey's Stockton Inn so that Hart would finish writing the lyric to the song "There's a Small Hotel" (ON YOUR TOES) rather than disappear on a drinking binge. BLUE MOON, therefore, can at least be commended for depicting Hart truthfully: as a brilliant, sensitive lyricist whose inability to achieve equanimity in his personal life eventually encroached on his professional life.

Blue Moon You saw me standin' alone Without a dream in my heart Without a love of my own

Ethan Hawke makes himself almost unrecognizable to play Lorenz Hart, the man who wrote those words.

Hart was five-feet tall, balding, a cigar always in his mouth, his back so curved his chin barely clears the bar at Sardi's where he spends most of the movie "Blue Moon" yakking away. His sad - if witty and sometimes brilliant - monologues are performed for bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), piano player Knuckles (Jonah Lees) and assorted folks who stop by the legendary Broadway celebrity hangout one fateful night in 1943.

Showcasing the alcoholism and other sorts of self-destructiveness that would kill him at age 48 seven months later, it's a daring, all-in performance by Hawke. It's already getting buzz this awards season.

Whether or not it nabs an Oscar nomination or two, it won't win many hearts in audiences looking for a fun night out at the movies.

With composer Richard Rodgers providing the melodies, Lorenz Hart penned the sophisticated lyrics of countless Great American Songbook staples. Along with the movie's title tune, there was "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." "My Romance." "Manhattan." "My Heart Stood Still." "The Lady Is a Tramp." And on. And on ... close to a thousand songs.

For two decades Rogers and Hart were a dynamic duo on Broadway and Hollywood. Piano bar songs on the soundtrack offer nonstop tribute to their musical glories, with echoes of contemporaries like the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin and even George M. Cohan.

Unfortunately, Robert Kaplow's script doesn't immortalize Lorenz Hart for all his achievements, but instead, for being the man who didn't write "Oklahoma!" Richard Linklater is once again Ethan Hawke's go-to director, confining the film's action essentially to one set, unfolding in something like real time on the night of March 31, 1943. For America, in those uncertain early years of World War II, that was the night "Oklahoma!" opened on Broadway and changed everything.

Rodgers and Hart were still a team when they began adapting the play "Green Grow the Lilacs" into a musical. Unfortunately, Hart's habit of going on weeks-long benders instead of showing up for work finally pushed Rodgers to his breaking point. As luck would have it, another lyricist was available. His name was Oscar Hammerstein II.

The rest, as they say, would become history, not just on Broadway but on community theater and high school stages to this day.

Lorenz Hart was in the audience for "Oklahoma!'s" opening night. But the corn as high as an elephant's eye, not to mention the dancing cowboys and the exclamation mark at the end of the title were more than his urbane Manhattan sensibilities could take. So he retreated to Sardi's for some lubricated self-pity an hour before the creators of the show, along with adoring first nighters would arrive to await the reviews.

Those reviews proved to be raves, hardly a recipe for improving Lorenz Hart's state of mind. His conversations with Richard Rodgers (Adam Scott), basking in triumph, are heartbreaking.

Among all the self-deceptions Hart concocts to help make it through the night, is his torrid passion for Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), an aspiring stage artist and daughter of the president of the theater guild. Half his age and his devoted protege, her final admission that she doesn't have those feelings for him is just one more knife in the heart.

The fact that Hart was, in fact, gay in those closeted times certainly wouldn't do much to change those feelings on Elizabeth's part. But when he confides to Richard Rodgers that he is in love with her - "everyone is" - he speaks from the heart.

Insecurities, self-doubt and fear are as integral to the creative process as the exhilaration and joy of success. Hawke's portrayal uniquely illustrates the torture not of a has-been, but of what could have been.

Following last year's brilliant Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown," "Blue Moon" is a reminder that creative genius is not something that a handful of people possess ... but something more akin to a curse that possesses them.

Lorenz Hart was a lover of love, an appreciator of beauty, a chaser of make-believe. Unfortunately, the ability to find perfect words for these wonderful emotions doesn't translate into finding them in real life.

"Blue Moon" is quintessentially Richard Linklater. A film with heavy dialogue but rich in character and depth.

Some might call this film boring, but what helps keep engagement levels is a strong performance by Ethan Hawke accompanied by a decently written screenplay.

The entire film feels like a theatre play brought to life on the big screen. It takes place in one bar but manoeuvers through conversations with different characters each with their own quirk.

I think what makes this film shine is Lorenz Harz (Hawke). A poor soul at the end of his time clinging to his past successes. A lonely man wanting love. As a film progresses, we learn more about our main character increasing our empathy and sadness for him.

In saying this, it is a film that struggles to reach the heights to call it a masterpiece. I feel like it's structure and style hinders it's ability in doing so.

I also will mention that I think Margaret Qualley was not strong enough in the female lead. With someone with not much dialogue, I felt like a stronger presence was needed to bring her character to life.

All in all, a decent movie but nothing to get too excited about.

7/10.