★★★1/2
Words Fail Me: Film Review of Blue Moon
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Cinema can be magnificent and breathtakingly epic or intensely, even painfully, intimate. David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Ryan’s Daughter presented brilliantly photographed landscapes that at times seemed to dwarf seemingly lesser aspects of the human condition. Films like Twelve Angry Men, My Dinner with Andre, or Glengarry Glen Ross on the other hand, turn an unflinching eye inward, focusing unflinchingly on the enigma otherwise known as the human condition.
Film is unique in that in combines the best qualities of all the lively arts. It has the rhythm and tonality of music, the color and compositional qualities of the visual arts, the narrative qualities of literature, and the spectacle and immediacy of theater. It is, like theater or music, a collaborative art form which presents the singular vision of a single artist. Cinema can take us anywhere the imagination can—it is, arguably, the best of all worlds.
Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a biopic of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), is a penetrating examination of a man who, despite the fact he has lost everything, still clings to his dreams of grace and beauty.
At the beginning of the film, Hart is attending his former partner Richard Rodgers’ (Andrew Scott) Broadway premiere of Oklahoma! which has every indication of becoming a monster hit. Having been replaced by Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) as Rodgers’ lyricist, Hart leaves the premiere early and goes to Sardi’s Bar where the Oklahoma! premiere party is scheduled to take place.
He parks at the bar and in a frenetically desperate dialogue—mostly monologue—with the bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale) and the piano player Morty (Jonah Lees), Hart at first gives a harshly unvarnished opinion of the new musical, saying that lines like “corn as high as an elephant’s eye” is not only inaccurate—“When has anyone ever seen an elephant in a cornfield?”—but is also banal and innocuous. As his diatribe continues, it soon becomes apparent the Hart’s vision of the musical theater (at least in his own estimation) is much more sophisticated, realistic, and world than that of the new show.
Hart also confides to Eddie that Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a twenty-something he idolizes, will be coming to the bar. Hart is obviously hopelessly infatuated with the girl, and although the idea of a forty-six-year-old man drooling over a young girl is repulsive, it soon becomes apparent that while Hart’s adoration has vague sexual overtones, it is very nearly platonic, as if he feels she is too beautiful to touch. Although Eddy and Morty snicker and ask Hart about having sex with her, Hart deflects the questions by gushing about Elizabeth’s personality and wit, as well as her beauty.
Hart’s romanticism is simultaneously endearing and exasperating. Watching a grown man—a sophisticated artist—gush on like an enamored schoolboy about a young woman who doesn’t care a whit about him is pathetic, but it is Hart’s self-deprecating humor and aesthetic sensibilities that ultimately redeem him. Lorenz Hart is not only an unapologetic romantic, he is a witty, incisive, and wise sophisticate, but he has lost his lifetime songwriting partner, is losing his battle with alcoholism, and (as it soon becomes apparent) has a become a pariah in the world of musical theater. Yet through all this, he has not lost his optimism, his love of beauty, his wit, or his sense of humor.
When he corners author E.B. White in a corner of the bar and starts his non-stop gushing, it becomes apparent that Hart is not only a hopeless romantic, but he cannot control the flow of his creativity. He engages with word games with E.B. White, who—almost the polar opposite of Hart—seems withdrawn and depressed. When White mentions that he is thinking about writing a children’s story, Hart responds with a story about a mouse in his apartment that he keeps catching and releasing. The mouse returns every morning, and Hart tells White he has named him Stuart. It is a nicely compact story about redemption and acceptance. White seems to love it. Connect the dots.
Later, Elizabeth shows up, greets Hart, who regales her in syrupy praise, and goes upstairs to dress—and to meet her mother. Members of the Oklahoma! cast and crew arrive for the party. Rodgers comes over to greet Hart and they talk, inevitably hashing over old triumphs, memories rifts, and grudges. Hart minces no words expressing his disdain for Oklahoma!, which he considers a specious and vacuous musical, in effect insulting his old partner.
Rodgers offers Hart an opportunity to work with him reviving one of their old works, A Connecticut Yankee, but Hart cannot stem his vitriol for Rodgers’ new partnership with the banal, couching his anger in his vision for the new Yankee. It is inevitably, and sadly, nothing short of self-destructive. Later, after Hart meets with Elizabeth and his hopes are slowly crushed as she prattles on about her boyfriend, he realizes yet another paragon of beauty has been denied him.
Blue Moon is a penetrating psychological study of a lost soul whose quixotic visions of truth and beauty are hopelessly outdated and impossibly idealistic. It is a deftly written screenplay about the final performance from one of musical theater’s greatest lights.
With its snappy dialogue, fixed setting, and emphasis on character, Robert Kaplow’s screenplay feels as if it belongs in the theater (or in a Thin Man movie) rather than on today’s big screen. The repartee between Hart and Eddie the bartender is the epitome of New York brashness and sophistication. Bobby Cannavale’s Eddie is the perfect foil for Hart’s excessiveness. He is as solid as Hart is flighty and as practical as Hart is whimsical. And they are friends; Eddie takes care of him, and Hart does need taking care of. In many ways, even though he is forty-six years old, he seems like a wonderstruck child, constantly amazed at the unfolding world around him—which is the man’s fatal flaw. Who can survive as a child in a den of wolves?
Blue Moon is an absorbing and intelligent movie carried not only by Kaplow’s wonderfully urbane screenplay but by the brilliant acting of the entire ensemble. Ethan Hawke turns in a magnificent performance as Lorenz Hart. Not only does he wear Hart’s innocence like a well-worn coat, but Hawke has transformed himself physically to look like the diminutive and squirrely man Hart seems to be. Bobby Cannavale is perfectly cast as Eddie, the bartender. His world-weary cynicism is nicely balanced with a wicked sense of humor. He is the perfect foil. The two are so perfectly matched that the rest of the cast pales in comparison.
Morty, the soldier boy piano player, seems to exist in the screenplay mainly to provide opportunities for plot exposition, yet Jonah Lees gives the boy a youthful—though opportunistic—charm. As Rodgers, Andrew Scott probably knows Hart better than anyone and is sick of his antics. As Hart hectors him during the biggest night of Rodger’s career, his patience wears thin. Scott is able to convey Rodger’s feelings for Hart, his mentor and friend, and how these feelings are worn threadbare by Hart’s behavior. It is a fine line Scott must navigate in this performance, and Scott acquits himself admirably.
Blue Moon is a film about one of the greatest lyricists in American musical theater. The man who wrote the words to hits like “My Funny Valentine”, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”, “Isn’t it Romantic”, and dozens of others, including, of course, Blue Moon was in the end alone with only his art to keep him company. He never lost his vision, his capacity for wonder, or certain elements of his innocence. It was unfortunate he lost everything else.
In that sense, it could be argued Lorenz Hart was a tragic hero whose flaw was his inability and unwillingness, unlike everyone around him, to compromise his vision.