Blue Moon

The lyricist Lorenz Hart’s contributions to the Great American Songbook cycle, collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers, are the stuff of legend. Yet, in 1943, only months before he died from pneumonia, a consequence of heavy drinking, Hart’s partnership with Rodgers was on the rocks. Rodgers had first paired up with Oscar Hammerstein II, and their musical Oklahoma! had reinvigorated and all but reinvented narrative musical theater. Richard Linklater’s luminous, erudite drama imagines a loquacious Hart (an astonishing tour de force by Ethan Hawke) on the night of Oklahoma!’s premiere, holed up at Sardi’s and moving through various stages of grief and acceptance—and blistering wit—when faced with Broadway’s new world order. Also featuring stellar supporting work from Andrew Scott (who won the Silver Bear for best supporting performance at the Berlinale), Margaret Qualley, and Bobby Cannavale, Blue Moon is a surprising yet entirely fitting addition to the Linklater canon: a film about the inevitable passage of time and the feeling of being left behind by those stuck in its folds. A Sony Pictures Classics release.