19/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Ethan Hawke stars in Richard Linklater's dialogue-heavy grab bag of what he sees as the last great tragedy in the life of US lyricist Lorenz Hart

Margaret Qualley and Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon

1943: a wartime cloud of anxiety has settled over the USA, to be briefly dissipated by the rowdy musical phenomenon Oklahoma! by the now famed duo of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, responsible for the music and lyrics, respectively. But Richard Linklater tells us that this isn’t the story we should be concerned with. The more interesting one is an untold portrait of a man lonely and scorned: Lorenz “Larry” Hart, Rodgers’ former writing partner, who died just seven months after the premiere of one of the most well-known US stage shows ever. The filmmaker plays a fittingly cruel joke on Hart by naming this portrait Blue Moon – named after Hart’s supposedly least favourite song, lyrically – while still honouring him with an 80-plus-years-late send-off through a world premiere in the Berlinale’s competition. The script was penned by author Robert Kaplow, who wrote the novel Me and Orson Welles [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which Linklater adapted for the screen in 2008.

Linklater’s Larry (Ethan Hawke) may be a self-righteous, overeager, alcoholic 47-year-old yapper with bisexual tendencies, but he’s also one of the USA’s most unknown lyrical geniuses. On the evening of the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma!, the short-statured man with hair hastily swept over his widow’s peak leaves the theatre to settle in at Sardi’s Restaurant, where the entourage of Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) begin to gather and celebrate over the course of this one comedic but tragic evening. Even Rodgers nearly begins to tower over the diminutive Hart, accentuated by the camera angle with cinematography by Shane F Kelly, where even the picture’s lensing won’t give the man a break.

Beginning with hard liquor and constant complaints shared with the barkeep Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and the pianist-cum-enlisted soldier whom he dubs “Knuckles” (Jonah Lees), Larry chokes out his compliments to Rodgers – he thinks Oklahoma! with an exclamation mark is trivial, really – and fights with him in equal part over the course of a nearly real-time evening. Injecting another layer into the film is the appearance of 20-year-old Yale University student and aspiring theatremaker Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), seemingly the apple of Hart’s eye.

Hawke spirals exceptionally through monologue after long-winded monologue tied together by rapid-fire jokes and witticisms – some blandly droll, others actually offputtingly funny – in a fashion that could very well be placed right back on Broadway. The soliloquising and endless jabs at Rodgers and Hammerstein are delightful until they’re not, leaving even the most indefatigable of viewers exhausted for some time. It’s a shame, as otherwise, the film is carried by Hawke’s stellar performance as a jittery, dissatisfied Hart. Instrumental music is another of the feature’s underlying constants, with the bar’s piano music almost acting as a mood-setting but occasionally overbearing pseudo-narrator.

Filled with comments that repeatedly recur without fail, Blue Moon could have remained slightly more subtle – at times, the screenplay seemingly doesn’t trust the audience to put two and two together – about the long-held historical insinuation that Hart liked men, or at least had a preference for them. Ironically, the truest chemistry on screen occurs between Hawke and Qualley. The two share a mutual, “irrational adoration”, says Elizabeth, just as tears almost seem to fill Larry’s eyes over this comment shutting down his expression of romantic love for her.

Her entry into the film brings a much-needed deceleration of its yammering pace, which, for the most part, remains enjoyable throughout, but it must be said that a dialogue-frenzied 100 minutes isn’t what everyone will be looking for. Nonetheless, the scenes between Elizabeth and Larry further make for a touching final few moments, marking a rewarding finale for the impressive “Great American Tragedy”, if you will, of Lorenz Hart.

Blue Moon is a US-Irish co-production staged by Cinetic Media, Detour Pictures, Renovo Media Group, Sony Pictures Classics, Under the Influence Productions and Wild Atlantic Pictures. Sony Pictures Classics holds the rights to the film’s world sales.

Photogallery 19/02/2025: Berlinale 2025 - Blue Moon

48 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.

{0} of {1}

Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott
© 2024 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - dario-caruso.fr, @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso