Ethan Hawke delivers a once in a lifetime performance as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater’s snappy, banter driven period piece, Blue Moon. With wide, dark eyes, a diminutive presence, a combover that isn’t fooling anybody, and an effortless gift of gab, Hawke’s turn as Hart is the finest work of his career, which is saying something since he’s been one of the most consistently under-valued performers of his generation.
Read our TIFF coverage including news, reviews, and interviews, with over 25 years of archives from the best of the Toronto International Film Festival.
On the evening of March 31, 1943 (seven months before his death at the age of 47), Lorenz “Larry” Hart leaves a Broadway musical theatre performance seconds before the performers on stage take their bow so he can rush on over to Sardi’s for the afterparty. The reasons for his sudden departure from the theatre are twofold. First, he hated the show, Oklahoma!, which featured music from his longtime collaborator and work partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), who came up with the “cornpone” ode to Americana alongside Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). He feels the need to vent to his bartender friend Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), the evening’s piano player (Jonah Lees), and the bar’s only other patron, author E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) before everyone else arrives in a good mood. Second, he’s keen on impressing his date for the evening, a twenty-year old college student named Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), a woman two decades his junior, which perplexes his friends since everyone assumes Larry is gay.
Linklater (who also has the biopic period piece Nouvelle Vague at this year’s festival) and screenwriter Robert Kaplow (who previously teamed up on Me and Orson Welles) take their cues from letters exchanged between Weiland and Hart, offering up a real time paced, single setting bit of cattiness. The look and fashion of the era are in full, eye catching display in Blue Moon, and the dialogue sounds like an uncensored riff on comedies and melodramas from the characters’ time period. It’s all back-and-forth banter and innuendo; fights full of witty retorts and cutting truths, and Linklater’s direction is energized by his cast, all of whom fit perfectly together like matching puzzle pieces.
Scott, Qualley, and Cannavale get top marks for their turns as Hart’s frequently forgiving and equally annoyed friends, but it’s Hawke that makes Blue Moon into a memorable character piece. While Hawke transforms his appearance and voice to fit Hart’s stature, the actor’s naturalized, often breathless energy is both human and otherworldly. In terms of matching wits and drinking prowess, Hart is a hard person to keep up with, but Hawke nails the character’s ability to control a conversation in spite of Larry’s often manic tendencies, overcompensating flourishes, and admittedly crushing bitterness that Rodgers’ biggest success was made without his input; a man asserting his dominion over any room, while constantly pointing out his own impending irrelevance.
Named after the most instantly recognizable song penned by Hart and Rodgers, Blue Moon is as nostalgic as it is unsentimental, with Linklater, Hawke, and Kaplow demystifying success by looking at one of the most unsung footnotes in the history of musical theatre.
