Another Richard Linklater talkfest featuring his favorite talker, Blue Moon stars Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, lyricist and longtime collaborator with composer Richard Rodgers (Babes in Arms, “My Funny Valentine,” “Blue Moon”). That is, up until Rodgers’ partnership with Oscar Hammerstein on Oklahoma!, which would be followed by the likes of South Pacific, Carousel, The King and I, and Sound of Music.
Set in 1943, with Hart nursing his resentment at Sardi’s bar in New York City while the Oklahoma! cast and crew celebrate opening night in the adjacent restaurant, Blue Moon is a portrait of a man on the precipice of an artistic and personal cliff (we learn in the opening sequence that Hart would die within the year, at the age of 48). Mostly, though, the movie is about Hawke talking.
A good litmus test to determine if you will appreciate Blue Moon would be to consider how you feel about Hawke’s charming, philosophizing, and desperately needy Jesse in Linklater’s Before Sunrise. His Lorenz Hart is physically another specimen—the hair and makeup here verges on the grotesque—but there is a strong spiritual resemblance when Hart barges into the bar and launches into self-serving stories and Casablanca impressions. (Imagine Jesse having grown older without being challenged by Julie Delpy’s Celine.)
As is the case with Before Sunrise, Blue Moon is well aware of its central figure’s blowhardiness (at one point a soldier leaves the bathroom as Hart continues to yammer on at the urinal). Although this is essentially a one-man show, with Hawke displaying a dazzling technical ability to sustain the shifts in rhythm and performance, Hart occasionally interacts with the bartender (Bobby Canavale), Rodgers himself (a squirming Andrew Scott), and a much-younger, aspiring set decorator (Margaret Qualley) whom Hart is leeringly mentoring. Patrick Kennedy also has a note-perfect cameo as a patient, polite E.B. White—though the movie’s suggestion that one of Hart’s boozy soliloquies inspired White’s beloved Stuart Little is tacky, if not downright insulting.
(10/30/2025)
