Blue Moon

Watched at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

A good charming and funny dialogue driven story about a self-destructive artist and character study with a wonderful performance from Ethan Hawke.

Richard Linklater is a master of dialogue driven storytelling and character study, and here, he continues to demonstrate and display his strong tactics with his direction for the atmosphere and tone. Alongside with the beautiful production designs and the setting, as usual, the dialogue is charming. The way characters interact with one another and the chemistry between the cast brings out a lot of funny moments, strong chemistry and energy. All thanks to the great performance from Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley and the rest of the cast.

The narrative, while admittedly it isn't the grandest story ever to be constructed, is a good observation about Lorenz Hart and his mental self-awarenwss crisis during the opening of his famous play. Understanding his emotions and the tension was pretty interesting and engaging to observe. The musicial score is good, the camera work is good, and the atmosphere is stunning. Although I do wish some of the pacing does improve especially towards the second act.

Overall, while it isn't the best work Linklater has made. Its a good hangout kind movie.

"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.

Director Richard Linklater's "Blue Moon," a dramedy about Lorenz Hart, derives its name from the most famous song Hart ever wrote with composer Richard Rodgers. Writer Robert Kaplan's script is filled with crackling dialogue, sophisticated accent notes, rich undertones and an observant narrative style that celebrates Hart's brilliance with words while also sympathizing with the tragedy of his personal life.

It's March 31, 1943. Hart (Ethan Hawke) has arrived early at Sardi's to fête former writing partner Richard Rogers on the opening night of his new show "Oklahoma!" It's a melancholy night for Hart, who is agonizingly aware that his own unreliability has forced Rogers to find a new collaborator. As audience members, we know that Rodgers and Hammerstein will go on to become Broadway's most celebrated creative team, while Rodgers and Hart will never be equally appreciated.

Using Linklater's typically meandering narrative style, the film offers a slow-tempo celebration of Hart's humor, insight and intelligence. But it also excavates and explores the pain beneath his sardonic observations and clever wordplay and it foreshadowing the self-destructiveness that will end his life seven months later. Hart skewers "Oklahoma!" for its cornpone sensibility and heart-on-its-sleeve emotion, while simultaneously recognizing that the show will be adored by audiences and run for years. He has a conversation with EB White (author of "Charlotte's Web") and takes a couple of minutes to give White the inspiration to write "Stuart Little." More importantly, Hart's conversation with the erudite White provides a forum for deep discussion about art while offering glimpses of Hart's insecurity and humanity. Finally, there's considerable time devoted to Hart's wildly implausible (but true) infatuation with Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley - Andie McDowell's daughter), a 20-year-old Yale student on whom Hart lavishes gifts, rapt attention and unalloyed adoration, despite his general affinity for men. It's a story simultaneously confusing, crisply written, insightful, mournful, funny and tragic. For anyone with a soul, it's a film that will inspire thought and reflection well after the closing credits roll.

Andrew Scott has received critical attention for his portrayal of Richard Rodgers, whom he portrays as a character who is disgusted by Hart's alcoholic benders while still appreciative of Hart's skills and instincts as a wordsmith. There's also an undertone of condescension as Rodgers realizes he is moving onward and upward, without Hart. But for my money, it's Hawke and Qualley who steal the show here. There's a lot of camera wizardry (kudos to Cinematographer Shane F. Kelly) for Hawke's portrayal of Hart, who was balding, 4'10" and old well beyond his 47 years. Even so, Hawke disappears convincingly into the role. For Qualley, playing a gorgeous, self-absorbed twenty-something requires zero dramatic range. But she's so open, honest and thoughtful that she infuses believability into her role as the idealized love interest of a man more than twice her age.

The plot of "Blue Moon" is best summarized by its opening lyrics: "Blue moon, you saw me standin' alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own." The film is a heartbreaking tribute to Lorenz Hart. It's also a cautionary note about the fragility of art and some of the artists who spend their lives creating it.

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 opens with quote from Oscar Hammerstein about Lorenz Hart: "He was alert and dynamic and fun to be around." Frustratingly, the movie then goes on to depict Hart as the kind of crashing bore you'd do almost anything to escape. For almost the entire running time Larry is engaged in a self-indulgent monologue about himself, with endless boastful references to his lyrical triumphs interspersed with his disdain for various rivals. There's nothing at all "fun" about it, unless you're inclined to revel in this kind of bitterness and self-flagellation. Ethan Hawke's performance as Hart - aided by a shaved head and greasy combover - is the kind of masturbatory turn finely calibrated to win admiring reviews and award nominations, even as it renders the character ever more insufferable, and finally loathsome. The one scene in which Hart isn't obsessed with himself has him obsessed with his beautiful 20-year-old "protege", with whom we're supposed to believe he is hopelessly in love (a notion perilously based on Hart's actual correspondence with Elizabeth Weiland). While writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater seem to have convinced themselves that this is believable, I seriously doubt any gay viewer or anyone appraised of the wisdom and self-awareness evident in Hart's lyrics will buy it for even a second. The scenes with Elizabeth, which so desperately strive to be poignant, not only ring hollow, they leave one wondering why a movie about Hart, who was unquestionably gay, needs to try so hard to convince us that he could also love a woman. I suspect I know why, but let's not go there. Suffice to say, this kind of archness is evident throughout. At one point, a young boy with Oscar Hammerstein, who the cognoscenti will guess is supposed to be Stephen Sondheim, is improbably rude about Hart's "sloppy" lyrics - an observation made decades later by Sondheim in his scholarly critiques of other lyricists. In the same scene Hart quips that "weighty affairs will just have to wait" - a quintessentially Sondheim lyric from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum. Yes, it's that kind of wank-fest. But never mind, if that's not your idea of hilarity, watching the extremes to which Linklater goes to emphasise Hart's shortness may have you in stitches. Even sitting on a high bar stool, Hawke somehow still looks like one of the seven dwarves. But it's not a complete waste of time. If nothing else, Blue Moon left me with a new appreciation of the oft-derided 1948 film about Hart, Words and Music. That movie may also have stretched credulity to the limit, but Mickey Rooney was at least vaguely likeable.