As those of you who follow this blog know, we are are huge Broadway fans So, we were were really looking forward to Richard Linklater's new movie Blue Moon about the last days of Rodgers and Hart and the first night of Rodgers and Hammerstein. We hoped to see it on the big screen but it didn't hang around long enough at a local theater for us to catch it. So, we paid $19.95 to watch it on Apple TV and we can say that it was absolutely worth it, and we're here to tell you why
Director Linklater’s Blue Moon is a moody, beautifully contained portrait of lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night Oklahoma! premieres — the moment Broadway shifts away from the world he once ruled. Ethan Hawke delivers a stunning, career-peak performance, capturing Hart’s quick wit, aching vulnerability, and corrosive self-doubt with a rawness that never feels theatrical, even when the film intentionally leans into stage-like visual devices.
And Blue Moon is a movie that naturally leans into conversation and memory, all propelled by Hawke’s merciless charisma. It’s the sort of intimate filmmaking that we don't find anymore and it's bound to please fans of actor-driven period pieces and anyone interested in the behind-the-scenes aches of creative life. Hawke, who's in every frame of this movie, is a near certain Oscar nominee and several members of the supporting cast could be in the running as well.
Margaret Qualley brings warmth and subtle tension as the young woman who becomes Hart’s accidental confessor, while Andrew Scott offers a cool, understated turn as Richard Rodgers, hinting at the creative and emotional struggles beneath their legendary partnership. As Hart's bartender and patient listener, Bobby Cannavale is a street smart counselor, best friend and willing one-man audience all rolled into one.
There's an extended scene with Rodgers and Hart alone amidst a crowd of admirers where you get the sense that their's was a bromance that survived overwhelming early fame only to wither amidst the same ying and yang that brought them together in the first place. Rodgers was the deliberate, focused craftsman while Hart was the jittery, obsessive and ultimately self-destructive auteur who was nonetheless a lyrical genius. One can only imagine what might have been if they had more years together.
Linklater uses this intimate chamber piece to evoke the glittering Broadway of the 1920s–40s — a world shaped by Rodgers & Hart’s sophisticated, slangy, emotionally complex songs — and to show how that era gave way to the integrated, story-driven musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein. In the process, Blue Moon becomes both an elegy for a vanished musical style and a bruising character study of a man who helped define it.
For all its wit and polish, this is not a cheerful story. Hart was a tortured soul -- acerbic, alcoholic, sexually confused and lonely. But show business is a tough racket, darlings. And you know the old saw: there's a broken heart (or, in this case Hart) for every light on Broadway.
Quiet, smart, and unexpectedly haunting, Blue Moon lingers long after the final fade-out.
