Movie Review: Blue Moon

Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics), on general release.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Any close-up and painfully intrusive look at a prolific talent in terminal decline is never going to make entirely comfortable viewing, but being an armchair voyeur in a cinema can make for an unashamedly interesting, if unsettling experience.

Sony Pictures Classics’ Blue Moon is a highly personal, often too claustrophic, but mostly fascinating delve into the complex mindset of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart, one that offers the viewer precious little respite as he assesses his life and achievements to date and comes to the realisation that his halcyon days are firmly behind him. Quoting the age-old weddings vows, he’s resigned to having had his better days and is now entering his worse.

Directed by Richard Linklater, written by Robert Kaplow and produced by Mike Blizzard, John Sloss and Linklater, Blue Moon is said to draw its core creative inspiration from letters written between Hart and a young woman, which Kaplow researched for the script. The unidentified young lady, called Elizabeth, would keenly correspond with Hart, and this apparently sparked ideas in Kaplow’s mind which formed the film’s structure.

A man who clearly loved the sound of his own voice, Hart only occasionally comes up for air, or a sip of whisky, the devil on his shoulder is his chronic alcoholism, while his razor-sharp wit and obvious personal charm are very much in evidence as he holds court in the legendary New York restaurant and showbiz hang out, Sardi’s.

Over the film’s 90 minutes, the camera hardly ever leaves the grimacing and grinning Hart and that alone makes the performance of Ethan Hawke all the more impressive. His demons are writ large across his face, his only solace being the whiskies served reluctantly by knowing barman Eddie, best friend and confidant, played immaculately by Bobby Cannavale in a crisp white uniform. Eddie pours the drinks and Hart pours his heart out. In the background, a nice touch is pianist Morty Rifkin (Jonah Lees), tinkling his way through a repertoire of classic tunes and providing a score literally in-tune with the melodrama that unfolds.

The only other thing Hart clings onto, apart from the bar, is his absolute adoration and unrequited love for the glamorous 20-year-old Elizabeth, played with sumptuous sexuality and genuine warmth by Margaret Qualley. Twenty-seven years her senior, evidently homosexual and a self-confessed alcoholic, when she says to him: “I do love you – just not in that way,” it’s a crushing blow to him in the film’s most intimate, saddest scene.

Often referred to as America’s Gilbert and Sullivan or even Lennon and McCartney, for some 20 years, along with creative partner, composer Richard Rodgers, Hart created a string of musical comedy hits, such as Pal Joey, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse and On Your Toes. Hits like ‘My Funny Valentine’, ‘The Lady is a Tramp’, ‘With a Song in My Heart’, ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’, ‘My Heart Stood Still’, and of course, ‘Blue Moon,’ quite rightly place the duo in the elite of the musical hall of fame.

Like a suicidal moth to a flame, Hart is determined to be in Sardi’s on the night of the after show party for his former partner’s new hit show Oklahoma!, Rodgers now having teamed up with another legendary lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, a creative combination that would go on to become probably the most successful songwriting team in American musical theatre history (South Pacific, Carousel, The King and I, The Sound of Music). On 31 March 1943 in Sardi’s, you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. The quick-fire banter, barbed comments and lines delivered with real venom by Lorenz Hart (Larry to close friends) are reminiscent of Woody Allen at his finest.

It all comes to a head when a triumphant Rodgers and Hammerstein take their post premiere plaudits in Sardi’s while Hart tries one last anguished, hopeless attempt to rekindle his working relationship with his previous partner, Andrew Scott playing the ruthless professional that Rodgers no doubt was, to absolute perfection. Despite the evident creative and personal collateral damage from what was ultimately a highly successful working relationship, there’s still a genuine love and mutual respect on show and, as another quite successful writer once penned, ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’.

That Hart died of pneumonia from exposure aged just 47, a chronic alcoholic, was a tragic end for such a talent. For such a wonderful lyricist to die like that, there are ironically, no words. Blue Moon isn’t a comfortable watch, but it’s a highly rewarding one.

Derek Smith