Blue Moon

 

Director Richard Linklater

Linklater on the set

actor Ethan Hawke

Lorenz Hart/Ethan Hawke

Richard Rodgers/Andrew Scott

BLUE MOON            B                                                                                                             USA  Ireland  (100 mi)  2025  d: Richard Linklater

It’s like, well, perhaps a Rodgers and Hart song, kind of beautiful and super sad and forlorn and all those things too.  A catchy tune where you’re devastated by the end.                              —Richard Linklater describing his film

While the film doesn’t have the romantic scope of his Before Trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), where the first two are among the best romantic love stories of the modern era, thriving on the spontaneity of the moment, he’s also made films like Dazed and Confused (1993), 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood, or even Everybody Wants Some !! (2016), which feel like anthems to childhood, as well as the mind-bogglingly funny Hit Man (2023), yet this is something different altogether, with Linklater releasing two films at the same time, an ode to the French New Wave from Godard’s Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1960) in Nouvelle Vague, and this 1940’s tribute to songwriter/lyricist Lorenz Hart.  Working again with Ethan Hawke for the first time since the Before Trilogy in what is essentially an elegiac character study in a film about art, artists, and meaning, this is a chamber drama revealing the dark sides of success, a biographical drama that focuses on a crucial night in Hart’s life, where what stands out is the heavily staged theatricality, with nearly the entire film taking place in real time at one location, a national landmark in Sardi’s restaurant, a historical spot in the heart of New York’s theater district, considered the toast of Broadway for more than 100 years.  Yet that’s simply the backdrop for what amounts to a non-stop, heavily-scripted discourse out of the mouth of lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke, nearly unrecognizable with a slick comb-over), a tortured artist who is deeply hurt by what he views as a betrayal from his longtime partner and friend, Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott), among the best composers of American musical theater, who decided instead to work with a different writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney), and lo and behold they turn out the biggest hit of Rogers’ career in Oklahoma!, a kitschy portrait of Americana that completely revolutionized musical theater in the early 1940’s by integrating songs, dances, and plot.  For Hart this is tragic, as he hates the musical they’ve created, pandering wholesomeness to overly white audiences, creating a completely inaccurate and inauthentic portrait of America, missing the humanity of the human soul, but the upbeat songs are catchy and audiences seem to love it.  Hart leaves the theater early and wanders into a nearly empty Sardi’s restaurant before the theater crowd comes crashing in, where this is a very dialogue-heavy work, as the camera remains almost exclusively in the bar, and the plot is driven by sprawling conversations and monologues that thematically jump back and forth with the bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and lounge player “Knuckles” (Jonah Lees) clinking on the piano, whose musical selections often compliment whatever the hell Hart is babbling about, beautifully evoking the era of the 1940’s.  That pretty much defines the picture, as the closeted gay Hart is a chatty Cathy, as they say, as he philosophizes and mocks, blasphemes and complains, lectures and analyzes, while catching the attention of whoever is sitting within earshot, told in a frenetic, screwball-comedy pace, where the entire film captures his every syllable, where he just goes on endlessly about everything under the sun to whoever is willing to listen, raising profound questions about the nature of art, the price of success, and the transience of fame.  But viewers may space out after a while, finding a bitterly exposed Hart a bit too much, while it can also become tedious and repetitious, with witty yet heavy-handed dialogue that doesn’t have the naturalness and light-as-a-feather airiness of a Linklater-written script, which makes all the difference in the world, and can instead feel forced down our throats, with few, if any, pauses to offer a moment of relief.  While there have been other successful musical biopics, like Mike Leigh’s TOPSY-TURVY (1999), Taylor Hackford’s RAY (2004), James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (2024), and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love (2024), this feels more like a one-man play, with the suffocating presence of Hart onscreen for nearly every shot.  Linklater doesn’t sanitize Hart’s addiction or despair, yet never loses sight of the brilliance behind his pain, as snippets of his songs drift through scenes like ghosts, reminders that even as Hart’s life crumbled, his words have endured.

If Hart ever imagined his life as a stage play, hurling words like thunderbolts, or exploding bombs, then the rest of the cast are just silent extras.  Often feeling like we’re in the middle of a Woody Allen movie, packed with textual cross-references, self-deprecating jokes, and sardonic commentaries, and just a touch of self-reflection, with wall-to-wall piano music of American standards and screwball comedy dialogue spewed fast and furiously, Hart is an alcoholic plagued by self-doubt, yet is recently sober, attempting to retrieve the essential purpose of his life that he feels has been dumped on the curb, already considered a has-been, as Rogers has found himself another successful partner, who’s much easier to deal with, by the way, making him the odd man out.  Nonetheless, whether he’s raving about the best line in the movie Ingrid Bergman Tribute: Casablanca (1942), Bogart’s “Nobody ever loved me that much,” another wartime film about two men and a girl, sharing many of the same thematic connections of a bar, friendship, dashed hopes, and a melancholy finale where the protagonist is left behind, or whether anyone else knows just how terrible Oklahoma! is, with its ridiculous use of an exclamation point to draw attention to itself, Hart is a force of nature waxing eloquently about the unequivocal allure of Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley as a blond, a baffling choice, since she’s a decade older), a Yale art student who just turned 20, hoping for a career as a production designer.  After months of correspondence and a mysteriously beautiful (for him) yet unconsummated weekend, he believes this may be the night to finally win her love, where he’s planning a grand soirée afterwards, hiring a string quartet, and even inviting the delivery boy in what he promises will be a memorable evening.  Eddie is confused (as are we), believing Hart prefers the company of men, but Hart defies all expectations, claiming he is “omnisexual,” with the film all but ignoring any hidden homoerotic tension, which CASABLANCA was filled with, by the way, if you believe Hart.  For a gay figure, the film strangely and mysteriously devotes a considerable amount of time to a heterosexual relationship, which may reflect the depths of his own existential loneliness.  Describing Elizabeth as his protégée and muse, suggesting she’s too sexy and smart for boys her own age, he goes on a rhapsodic rant about how much she means to him, suggesting it might be love, despite their age difference.  It sounds like a pipe dream, one of those long-winded alcoholic excursions of prosaic virtuosity in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, as Hart is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, where his alcohol-fueled tirades are a mask for his deeply repressed insecurities, basically an open book for anyone to read, yet reality rarely lives up to those long suppressed hopes, which are so easily dashed in an instant.  Off in a corner he spots E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy), a fellow writer who also has a clever and witty way with words, where their dialogue together is an endless stream of carefully calculated phrases where every word is aptly grandiose, filled with underlying meaning, as the two effortlessly hit it off.  Nonetheless, Hart singlehandedly holds court for the first half of the film, sneaking a shot of bourbon every now and then to bolster his courage, tossing off philosophical maxims like “How can you give voice to the whole world if you don’t have the whole world inside of you?,” gearing up to meet the eye of the storm when all the theater well-wishers show up in an entourage surrounding Richard Rogers, all offering unanimous praise, claiming it’s the greatest musical of all time, with Hart forced to offer his own disingenuous congratulations in this chorus of effusive praise.  Probably the weakest aspect of the film is the digital cinematography by Shane F. Kelly, a Linklater regular since A SCANNER DARKLY (2006), but it lacks spatial depth, never really capturing the claustrophobic, closed-in feeling of the room, often having the artificial staginess of a filmed play.  

Having worked together for more than 20 years from the 20’s to the 40’s, writing 28 stage musicals together, along with over 500 songs, Rogers can see through Hart’s obvious disdain for Oklahoma!, yet he’s willing to set that aside in the interest of being magnanimous, having put up with all of Hart’s emotionally insecure mood swings and alcoholic doldrums for all those years, where he was simply a pain in the ass to work with, always flying off the handle, something of a drama queen grabbing all the attention, while he was left with doing the hard work.  Nonetheless, he offers him a chance to write a few new songs for a revival of A Connecticut Yankee, their successful musical from 1927, but Hart is more interested in his delirious idea about creating a grand musical spectacle around adventurer Marco Polo, which sounds like an exotic journey into the strange and undiscovered lands of King Kong (1933), filled with the same kind of extravagance.  “It’s the thrill of a lifetime,” which he believes is infinitely more interesting than the homogenized and overly predictable Oklahoma!  “Who wants inoffensive art?” he exclaims at one point, but the war years may have taken a toll, with a weary nation preferring something more safe and conventional.  While the ever-eccentric Hart is stealing his limelight, Rogers calmly returns to his party of well-wishers, reminding him to think about the new songs.  While Ethan Hawke’s deliberately showy performance of Hart is the centerpiece of the film, breathing life into the role, something should be said for the saintly grace shown by Rogers (Scott won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Berlin Film Festival), and the endless patience on display, shown through a myriad of changing facial expressions, where it’s clear their paths are on different trajectories, as he looks so effortlessly polite in such an obviously uncomfortable situation, moving his way upstairs to an afterparty that leaves Hart behind.  As an aside, Hart also meets a young Hammerstein prodigy dressed in a tuxedo named Stephen (Cillian Sullivan), a foreshadowing reference to Stephen Sondheim, who would go on to redefine Broadway musicals with his virtuosic wordplay while also introducing darker themes, becoming theater's most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century, and just happens to be the subject of Linklater’s next project, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, which will be filmed over the course of the next 20 years, with actors aging naturally, not to be confused by the upcoming holiday release by the same name.  By the time Elizabeth shows up, Hart is all aflutter, his nerves on edge, yet his manners are impeccable, as he curiously gives her all of the attention, wanting to hear everything since they last met, as he’s all ears, literally hanging on every word.  While she’s flattered by his near-obsessional infatuation, coming from a man who is more than twice her age, she makes it clear her interest is “not in that way.”  Perhaps the title of the film says it all, as this is not some sunny remembrance, but is instead a collision course between the high-wire act of being a celebrated artist who may already be on a downward spiral, but just doesn’t realize that yet, and the inescapable success of his ex-partner, who along with Oscar Hammerstein would go on to become the greatest writing team in American musical history, leaving Hart behind as yesterday’s news.  It’s a savagely despairing story written by Robert Kaplow, whose novel was the source material for Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2008), adapting the material from Hart’s letters that he wrote to an unidentified woman named Elizabeth, which Kaplow bought at an estate sale, accentuating the ups and downs that occur in the ever-evolving life of a melancholic artist, becoming a mournful tale of a man whose career was cut too short, with Ethan Hawke capturing the contradictions of his character, where everything is secondary to his performance, whose heightened mood swings have a profoundly dark emotional impact. Described at the beginning of the movie as “the saddest man I ever knew,” one of three quotations from companions who draw a picture of a sociable but devastatingly lonely person, within seven months Hart would drunkenly collapse in a rain-soaked back alley and die (which is actually the opening sequence, with a radio broadcast obituary playing over it), with Linklater deserving credit for generously reviving his spirit in this Irish wake-like, tragicomic sendoff, where, perhaps coincidentally, the film was actually shot in Ireland, specifically in and around Dublin, recalling, of course, John Huston’s The Dead (1987).            

2013 Top Ten List #7 Blue Jasmine

BLUE JASMINE           A         
USA  (98 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Woody Allen             Official site 

After an 8-year sabbatical making movies overseas, Woody Allen finally returns to America like he’s found the promised land, writing his most entertaining and dramatically rich screenplay since the 1980’s when he was working with Mia Farrow, doing a constantly inventive and theatrically invigorating variation on Tennessee Williams, in particular his 1948 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Streetcar Named Desire, featuring an exceptional international cast led by Australian actress Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, who is something of a nuclear force operating on another wavelength from all other Allen actresses, doing a modern riff on Blanche DuBois, a younger version of the delusional, perpetually fragile woman who has fallen from grace, but has yet to realize the staggering enormity of the abyss she’s fallen into.  Written with Blanchett in mind, she is onscreen for nearly every shot of the film, showing a range of emotion that hasn’t been seen in a Woody Allen film in over thirty years, perhaps ever.  While this is clearly an Allen film, it’s also something of a departure for him writing such an intensely dramatic role, easily one of the best in his lengthy career, where Blanchett seems born to play the part, not seen having this much fun since NOTES ON A SCANDAL (2006).  While she’s not as prominently featured, equally enthralling is British actress Sally Hawkins as Ginger, last seen performing against type in Submarine (2010), playing the sister role of Stella Kowalski, a more earthy, warmhearted and working class woman who must contend with physical brutes for men, brilliantly played by Brooklyn-born Andrew Dice Clay (who hasn’t been in a movie in 12 years) as Augie, her first husband, and later Jersey-born Bobby Cannavale as Chili, her fiancé, two physically imposing Stanley Kowalski characters, working stiffs whose foul mouths and quick tempers have a tendency to “lose it” from time to time, while also seen trying to sweet talk their way back into good standing.  What’s surprising is the effectiveness of flashback sequences, where half the film takes place in the past when Jasmine was a wealthy Upper East Side socialite married to Hal, Alec Baldwin, a Wall Street investor whose financially fraudulent business practices eventually lead him to the slammer, but not before he steals every last dime and nickel from all his investors, leaving Jasmine embarrassed and without a penny to her name, sadly moving across the country where she hopes to make a new start in San Francisco with her more commonplace sister.          

The culture shock of living in an ordinary environment leaves Jasmine horrified, depleted of her reason for living, which appears to be a concept of worth based upon the accumulated reserve of unlimited funds to spend, where she instead regularly pops Xanax as if it were candy out of a bottle while slurping down Stoli vodka martinis with a lemon twist, leaving her in a distorted state of mental deterioration.  Despite her dire economic situation, Jasmine continues to pass herself off as upper class royalty, where it’s simply inconceivable for her to alter her lavish lifestyle, continually criticizing her sister for settling on Neanderthal brutes that only reflect upon her low self-esteem, while the two men in Ginger’s life never let Jasmine forget how her conniving thief of a husband stole all their money along with everybody elses, making him the most wretchedly despicable man on the planet.  But Jasmine is not deterred, completely incapable of sympathizing with the working class or their real world problems, consumed instead with her own worries, wondering what has a woman got to do to escape the doldrums of mediocrity, where she believes all it takes is the need to think big, bigger than the vacuous trap that defines Ginger’s life, working at a grocery store, taking care of two kids, and never having a moment for herself (or her sister) anymore.  Since Jasmine’s life has been a gluttony of hedonism, where every waking moment has been spent indulging in life’s pleasures, including a husband that bought her every extravagant gift and luxury item she could ever hope for, perhaps this made it easier for her to look the other way when her philandering husband was sleeping around with every attractive woman he set eyes upon, where both felt it was their God-given right to have whatever they wanted in life.  And for awhile, they were riding high among the social elite, written about in the celebrity tabloids as an up and coming power couple, holding extravagant parties where important people show up, as if this validates their very existence.  But now, of course, she’s lost everything, having to accept criticism from the morons in Ginger’s life that literally make her cringe, finding their crudeness to be revolting, believing their lack of sophistication and refinement will only prevent Ginger from ever wanting more out of life, as she’s settling for these hopelessly undistinguished losers.

Jasmine’s plans for the future, of course, make little sense, as she has no work qualifications whatsoever other than the ability to assemble an overpriced luxury wardrobe that distinguishes her from those in more practical attire.  Her sheer incompetence in learning necessary work skills sets her apart from Ginger’s efficient reliability, someone who’s gotten two kids to school and can still show up for work on time.  Jasmine, on the other hand, is literally overwhelmed by anything having to do with work, needing pills and yet another cocktail to help alleviate all the tension she feels.  Jasmine would have us believe that it’s not easy being rich, where you have to cater to all the whims of eccentric personalities in people who have never been told no, who are used to getting what they want, where it’s impossible to please everybody, while at the same time having to organize tiresome fundraisers for the poor, where extending a helping hand to others is fraught with difficulties and unending pressures.  In Jasmine’s world, life is a neverending theatrical performance, where it’s all about style and flair, where ordinary concerns never even enter into the picture, where the working stiffs in Ginger’s life are exactly what’s wrong with the world, men who have no ambition or dreams, who think too small, continually toiling in a dead-end job working for others, where they’re constantly being told what to do, so they spend their own lives ordering others around like the narrow-minded bigots and tyrants that they become.  Allen creates an excoriating picture of the aristocratic mindset, especially when Jasmine and Hal are flush with money and find it so burdensome to stop thinking about themselves for a single moment and have to put up with out of town visitors like Ginger and Augie who are so out of place in “their world” that they may as well be from another planet, like the world of the mundane.  What is initially such a hilarious portrait of polar opposites grows deathly serious by the end, becoming one of the darkest works Allen has ever written, a devastating portrait of a dream deferred, where the unbridled lust and grandiose ambition of the great American Dream has lost its luster, becoming a pathetic picture of lost and fragmented memories of an already forgotten era, where the rich are portrayed as manipulating and conniving thieves, while the poor and middle class are stuck with working off their accumulated debt, stuck in an endless quagmire not of their own choosing where they live the lives of indentured servants, like bought and sold commodities, each one easily replaced by the next sap waiting in line to take their place.