150 Word Review: 'Blue Moon' (2025)
Without a love of my own
Blue Moon has the energy and immediacy of a play, but celebrated indie director Richard Linklater’s camera lingers on his lead actor’s face, capturing every spark of joy and quiver of pain, a purely cinematic experience.
The actor is Ethan Hawke, giving one of his most vibrant and vulnerable performances as Lorenz Hart, the famous lyricist and partner of composer Richard Rodgers. Blue Moon takes place in the renowned New York theater-district hangout Sardi’s on the night of Rodgers’s greatest artistic achievement at that point in his career, the opening of the musical Oklahoma!, which changed Broadway and songwriting almost overnight, a triumph he did not share with Hart, but with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.
Hart is a queer, middle-aged, motormouthed alcoholic with bottomless appetites. He is as brilliant as he is self-destructive, but Hawke’s performance is gorgeously defiant. His Hart is fighting for his life every minute of the day.