Blue Moon Review: Hawke Shines in Layered Biopic

Ethan Hawke is superb as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, the claustrophobic character study of an unhappy, delusional, self-aware artist.

We first meet Lorenz Hart – a renowned U.S. lyricist and librettist, whose 25-year collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers gave us songs like “With a Song in My Heart” (1929), “The Lady Is a Tramp” (1937), “My Funny Valentine” (1937), and the titular “Blue Moon” (1934) – in New York City. It’s March 31, 1943, exactly seven months before his death, and the forty-one years-old Hart is at Sardi’s bar, drinking and reminiscing. “What’s the best line in Casablanca?,” he asks bartender/confidante Eddie (Bobby Cannavale, of The Irishman), before telling us himself, without waiting for an answer. “No one has ever loved me that much.“

As the film goes on and we watch the lyricist interact with various acquaintances – from Eddie and US writer/customer E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy, of The Queen’s Gambit) to collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott, of Ripley) and current crush/”protegé” Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley, of The Substance) – we understand just how important that quote is for our protagonist, who spends the entire night reminding everyone around him just how much he matters while failing to realize that he is but an extra in everyone else’s story.

But that doesn’t make the lead of this tale any less interesting. Linklater’s Lorenz Hart is such a fascinating character because he’s both delusional and self-aware; both hopeful and doomed. He’s highly intelligent, yet very selective in what he chooses to see. He’s quite obviously gay, by his own admission, yet he can’t stop telling us how infatuated he is with Elizabeth. He knows he has a drinking problem, yet he keeps pouring himself shots with the glee of a child who knows he’s doing something naughty.

We find him irritating and, at times, even unbearable, and the longer we spend with him, the more claustrophobic we feel, inundated with long-winded speeches that won’t stop coming and that hardly ever reflect the truth. Yet at the same time, we never fail to see just how deeply unhappy he is. He’s that person that people “love,” but “not in that way” – someone they like having around because he can be useful to them, but who already belongs to the past, no matter how hard he tries not to.

“That should be the title of my autobiography: ‘Stop me if I’ve told you already’ – and then, print it twice,” he says halfway through the film, in yet another attempt at self-deprecating humor that barely conceals how affected he is by the rave reviews that Richard Rogers has been receiving all night for his new musical “Oklahoma!”, which has just opened on Broadway. But a compassionate look exchanged with the perceptive Eddie tells us everything we need to know about his state of mind, and the fact that he cannot seem to be able to leave the bar further establishes him as someone who’s stuck in time, almost like a ghost, or a memory that will soon be forgotten.

Just like a theatre play, Blue Moon unfolds entirely in one location and revolves around a few key characters. As our lead, Ethan Hawke is exceptional, delivering an impressive amount of words in an endless series of monologues that are both irritating and disarming, conveying all the contradictions of an artist who refuses to acknowledge he’s not relevant anymore. Bobby Cannavale is just as impressive as Eddie, effortlessly inhabiting the only empathetic character in the whole movie and making this “play within a play” all the more affecting. Though Andrew Scott and Margaret Qualley have less screen time, both are essential to the film’s success and play their respective characters to perfection.

The real star of the movie is a screenplay (Robert Kaplow) that is filled to the brim with clever, quotable lines, and that slowly unpeels the many layers of its protagonist to reveal someone who’s much more complex than we initially thought. That the film was shot in fifteen days is even more impressive, and a testament to the talent both in front of and behind the camera.

Blue Moon is not a film for everyone. It demands your full attention and frequently tests your patience by quite literally locking you in a room with its tiresome, frustrating protagonist. But as the movie goes on, your perception of Lorenz Hart will slowly change as more aspects of his personality are revealed, until all that’s left is compassion for a man who’s desperately trying to stay relevant in a play where he’s already been cast as an extra. Linklater’s latest is yet another layered, haunting gem from the Boyhood director, and an impressive showcase for lead Ethan Hawke.

Blue Moon premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 18, 2025. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews!