Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon Is a Lyrical Goodbye to a Forgotten Broadway Genius
There’s been a quiet but meaningful buzz lately around Richard Linklater’s latest film, Blue Moon, and it feels like one of those rare projects that sneaks up on you emotionally. At first glance, it might sound like just another musician biopic, but that assumption is quickly turned on its head. What’s been delivered instead is something far more intimate, restrained, and quietly devastating.
Blue Moon centers on Lorenz Hart, the brilliant yet deeply troubled lyricist behind some of the most enduring songs in the Great American Songbook. He’s the “Hart” in Rodgers and Hart, the wordsmith responsible for classics like My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is a Tramp, and, of course, Blue Moon itself. Ethan Hawke steps into Hart’s shoes, and it has to be said that one of the most powerful performances of his career is being witnessed here. Hart is portrayed not as a mythic legend, but as a fragile, sharp-tongued, wounded human being nearing the end of his life.
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What makes Linklater’s approach so compelling is its simplicity. The entire film unfolds over the course of a single night, largely set inside Sardi’s, the famous New York theater bar. Hart is shown drinking, talking, flirting, lashing out, and reflecting as he waits for a celebration that marks his own professional erasure: the opening night of Oklahoma!, the first major collaboration between his longtime partner Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. That moment is treated not as a public triumph, but as a private heartbreak.
Rather than racing through decades of achievements, the film lingers in conversation, memory, and regret. It’s almost theatrical in structure, with dialogue carrying the emotional weight. The fragility of art, the fear of being left behind, and the cruelty of changing cultural tastes are all quietly explored. The myth of the Great American Songbook is gently interrogated, not torn down, but humanized.
Hawke’s Hart is acerbic, funny, narcissistic, and unexpectedly tender. His bitterness is palpable, yet his love for language and music still flickers beneath the surface. There’s also a subtle romantic thread involving a younger woman, played by Margaret Qualley, which feels less like a love story and more like a desperate attempt to stay afloat emotionally.
Linklater, working with longtime collaborator Hawke, proves once again that big ideas don’t require big spectacle. With a single location, a handful of characters, and beautifully written dialogue, an entire era of American culture is evoked. It’s been described as an “anti-biopic,” and that feels accurate. Instead of explaining Hart’s life, the film allows you to sit with him, listen to him, and slowly understand the cost of his genius.
By the time Blue Moon reaches its quiet conclusion, it doesn’t just feel like a film about Lorenz Hart. It feels like a meditation on aging artists, changing times, and the fear of becoming irrelevant. In that sense, Linklater has crafted not just a portrait of the past, but something that resonates uncomfortably with the present.
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