Blue Moon Review (2025 BFI London Film Festival)
For over twenty years, he was half of the biggest songwriting team on Broadway. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Lorenz Hart put the lyrics to Richard Rodgers’ music, giving the world 28 stage musicals and over 500 songs, including classics like Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and, of course, Blue Moon. But their partnership came to an abrupt halt when Rodgers started working with librettist Oscar Hammerstein. Their first collaboration was the fabulously successful Oklahoma!, which debuted in 1943 – and it’s the starting point for Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, one of the saddest stories of break-up and rejection you’ll ever see.
In an opulent bar and restaurant, the opening night party for Oklahoma! is moments away, but Hart (Ethan Hawke) is the first guest, regaling barman Eddie (a perfectly cast Bobby Cannavale) with the latest on the young woman who’s captured his heart and his many thoughts on the new musical. As everybody involved in the production pours into the venue, Hart is face-to-face again with Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), his former writing partner, and also confesses his feelings to the ambitious Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley). For him, it’s an evening of heartbreak and pain but he’s determined to put on a show of his own, so that those around him can’t see the truth. Yet it always seeps through.
Singer Mabel Mercer’s description of Hart as “the saddest man I ever knew” has pride of place in the opening credits and, despite his non-stop wisecracks, wit and genial public persona, it gets right to the core of the man – as does Hawke’s tour de force performance. His attempts to cover up his loneliness and unhappiness are all transparent. His comb-over is the saddest thing on show in Blue Moon; he can’t resist adding pointed barbs to his whip-cracking dialogue, and the sense of a brilliantly gifted man who never felt he was good enough never goes away. But Hawke’s portrayal goes further, making Hart’s comparatively small stature – he was just 5 feet 2 inches – just as telling as his use of words. There’s no CGI going on here, no camera trickery, just good old-fashioned acting. Sat on a bar stool, he compresses his entire body to appear smaller, in other scenes, he’s always looking up at other people. And he’s all too aware that they’re looking down on him.
While Hawke delivers a truly awards-worthy performance, this is not a one-man show. He heads an impressive ensemble cast, including Scott’s cool, businesslike Rodgers and Patrick Kennedy as writer E B White, sat quietly in a corner in the bar, looking like he’s stepped straight out of a 1940s movie. It’s a dialogue heavy film in a very stagey setting, but plays both to its advantage. Robert Kaplow’s screenplay sparkles and crackles, while the setting provides plenty of quiet corners and small staircases for its many conversations and enough rooms to make it feel like more than one location. This is a film about the theatre, after all …..
True to form, Linklater has yet again given us the unexpected, a film that lays bare the frailty that can tragically go hand in hand with talent and artistry. And with Ethan Hawke delivering one of the best – if not the best – performances of his career, Blue Moon is an absorbing, moving experience which may prove to be unstoppable as the awards season approaches.
★★★★ 1/2
Screened at the London Film Festival on 16th, 17th and 19th October / In UK cinemas from November 28th. / Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott, Patrick Kennedy, Simon Delaney / Dir: Richard Linklater / Sony Pictures
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