Director Richard Linklater's latest project with actor Ethan Hawke is a dream for lovers of film and/or theater.
Blue Moon has an outstanding script, wonderfully evocative art design and costuming, a transporting score and award-caliber performances by a cast led by Hawke, who transforms into the brilliant but tragic songwriter Lorenz Hart, who co-wrote the song in the film's title and hundreds upon hundreds more.
Hart has taken his regular seat at the bar in Sardi's lounge, and it is there he holds court, with the bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and a piano player in an Army uniform (Jonah Lees), whom he dubs "Knuckles," as supporting players. In meandering, vulgar but fascinating anecdotes, Hart recounts his relationship with Rogers and trashes Oklahoma!'s homespun sentimentality, admitting he's bitter and jealous of the show's success.
Though Rogers, Hammerstein and the show's producers will be arriving shortly for a celebration, Hart announces he is actually in Sardi's to meet a young woman with whom he's been corresponding, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley of The Substance and Kinds of Kindness), a Yale student who aspires to working in the theater and wants to meet Rogers.
As Hart waits, he regales all listeners -- eventually to include the writer E.B. White (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web) played by Patrick Kennedy -- with his amorous intentions for 20-year-old Elizabeth, even though Eddie and Knuckles assume the flamboyant gadfly is attracted to men. When Hart explains he is "omnisexual," listeners will no doubt wonder if he is revealing truth, a bit of self-deception, or some emotional or mental disturbance. As we discover, it's all of the above.
As the story progresses, Hart's insecurities, and the alcoholism that destroyed his career and relationship with Rogers, become increasingly visible. His need for affirmation, reflected in his final exchanges with Rogers and Elizabeth, is sad and distressing.
The screenplay, written by first-timer Rober Kaplow and based on letters between Hart and Weiland, virtually sparkles with wit and insightful nuance. It will surely get nods come awards time.
The final minutes of Linklater's tale of love found and lost will slowly ring down the curtain on one of America's greatest theater talents, who nine months after Oklahoma!'s premiere would be found drunk and unconscious on a street corner. Hart died just a few days later, but the American songbook he and Rogers created lives on.
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