Blue Moon

The best thing Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) ever wrote was the song ‘Blue Moon’, a timeless standard – and he hates it, resenting the tossed-off, gorgeous simplicity of his work most embraced by the public. His former composing partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has moved on to work with Oscar Hammerstein. Their first work together, Oklahoma!, was the kind of breakout hit Rodgers and Hart always chased but never achieved.

pening night, 1943, only months before his untimely death, and the short, balding Hart is losing himself in a bottle at famed Broadway hotspot Sardi’s, waiting for the newly minted megahit pair to make their entrance to the afterparty. With performances pitched high, the script from Robert Kaplow is packed with florid monologues, crackling exchanges of dialogue, and an appreciably theatrical execution. Blue Moon is a display of director Richard Linklater’s masterful management of tone, rhythm and tension, ensuring that the film remains enthrallingly cinematic even as the action largely plays out in a single space.

Through it all, an exceptional Hawke rivets us to the screen. “Exasperating, exhausting, heartbreaking, funny, catty; The quiet devastation of Hart’s lonely, desperate decline simmers beneath, made all the tougher by the man’s own awareness of his forthcoming doom”. — Tom Augustine “Beautifully executed and fascinatingly nuanced… It’s another satisfying and characteristically idiosyncratic entry in the fruitful Hawke and Linklater collaboration.” — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter Explore the full programme at nziff.co.nz.