‘Blue Moon’: Ethan Hawke Captures the Wit and Struggles of Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater’s Enrapturing Portrait of a Great American Songwriter

Alci Rengifo

Being a genius does not make life any easier, quite the opposite. Stories of great artists can be so compelling because of their pains and heartaches. Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” manages to encompass a whole portrait of legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart in one lovelorn evening. Hart wrote some of the timeless early 20th century entries in the Great American Songbook with Richard Rodgers, like “Blue Moon,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Behind the silky, witty melodies was a tortured artist gripped by alcohol and a closeted sexuality. Instead of aiming for some broad biopic, Linklater eloquently reveals enough of the man through a compact scenario, captured by Ethan Hawke in a wonderful performance.

The opening of this film finds Hart (Hawke) on the night of March 31, 1943 in New York, sitting through the premiere of “Oklahoma!” It is the first stage musical Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has written post Rodgers and Hart, with his new creative partner, librettist and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Afterwards, Hart makes his way to Sardi’s, where old friend and bartender, Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), waits. Supposedly Hart has been staying sober, but tonight a drink is quite tempting, considering the expected arrival of the “Oklahoma!” cast and team for an after party. Hart also confesses he is smitten with Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a Yale student who happens to be his new protégé. She’s also 20. It could be love or simply an artist beginning to feel time slip away as he watches his old collaborator receive applause for work Hart considers to be pure fluff. 

All Broadway aficionados know “Oklahoma!” become a smash hit that would run for five years and remains a standard selection for high school theater classes. Rodgers and Hammerstein would go on to find more success with famous productions like “The Sound of Music” and “The King and I.“ Hart can foresee it and doesn’t care, though he feels a sting of envy. That approach helps “Blue Moon” feel sincere and iconoclastic. The screenplay is by novelist Robert Kaplow, who previously wrote 2008’s “Me & Orson Welles” for Linklater. That was also a fun yet very human portrait of backstage Broadway life and Orson Welles as a brilliant, though vain, artist. Ethan Hawke’s charmingly manic performance of Hart has the same effect. You instantly like the lyricist while feeling for him as he rambles to Eddie about his infatuation with a 20-year-old, composing adolescent fantasies in his mind, hoping tonight is the night they will finally have sex. The language is exceptionally literate, using wit and word games in a way that convincingly evokes a character which makes his living through his vocabulary. He builds a good case for why an exclamation mark at the end of a show’s title is absurd. Hart can be eloquent and raunchy, but never boring.

Linklater refreshingly distances himself from any semblance of a traditional biopic. Hart and an emerging circle of characters become much more, from commentaries on the artistic process to a critique of the relationship between art and commerce. Sitting in a booth near the bar is E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), who Hart instantly recognizes and showers praise of his essays. The writer is feeling burned out on commentaries, revealing that he is working on a children’s book. Some viewers will instantly note that White wrote classics like “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web.” World War II is raging and while Hart chomps on one cigar after another, both men can get serious to reflect on a world going mad. Linklater treats the audience like intelligent viewers who don’t need everything spoon fed. This is an enjoyable film, but not one pretending like it wants to be box office champ over the weekend.

When the “Oklahoma!” party arrives, more levels to what Linklater wants to explore reveal themselves. Moments can be insightful on the politics of the entertainment world. Hart may trash talk Rodgers’ opus but he embraces his old friend and Hammerstein with nothing but praise for the production. At the time, the New York theater community was a rare safe space for a gay man, so it’s no surprise to see Hart flirting with a piano player he promises to introduce to Rodgers. It is also easy to see that maybe what Hurt really wants out of Elizabeth Weiland is genuine companionship, mistaken for romantic love. When the two huddle in a coat room, he wants to hear about her latest exploits with boys, like a best friend eager for details. Yet people are complicated and it stings when someone else seems to get close to seducing her, or maybe it’s just that feeling of being left behind. When Hart talks with Rodgers, the latter wants them to work on a revival of “A Connecticut Yankee,” with new song numbers. He also balks when Hart is honest about what he thinks of “Oklahoma!” Rodgers comes across as the one that is willing to cater to commercial interests, unafraid of producing cornball work to sell tickets. Hart’s taste for wicked satire almost seems to perturb the composer. Their debate is full of palpable tension. Linklater also uses such moments to provide more of a window into his subject, when Rodgers reminds Hart of his alcoholic binges, which contributed to an erratic writing partner that the more controlled Rodgers couldn’t deal with.

As a director Linklater has been impressively versatile, capable of playing with multiple genres. His credits include “Dazed and Confused” and “School of Rock,” yet also “Boyhood” and the “Before Sunrise” trilogy. The latter two also featured Hawke. Together these two are another one of those director-actor pairs who keep finding the inspiration to make unique films. Hawke’s performance in “Blue Moon” is a mixture of evoking genius and heartbreak. We have to believe the Hart we meet wrote the lyrics, “Blue moon / You saw me standin’ alone / Without a dream in my heart / Without a love of my own.” The illusion is created by making Hawke look much shorter, so he does indeed feel like a man wandering a larger world of ambitions. Like the great poets, his Hart lives off sensations and the immediacy of feelings. He is so absorbed by the things he loves, like beauty and cigars, that he doesn’t care to risk his sanity. “Blue Moon” is an enrapturing evening with an artist whose heart is always on the edge.

“Blue Moon” releases Oct. 17 in New York and Los Angeles and expands Oct. 24 nationwide.