When does an artist die? Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon opens with a direct answer as it pertains to its subject, famed American lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), as he stumbles drunkenly to the ground of a Hell’s Kitchen alleyway in November 1943. Then a radio announcer’s voiceover narration dutifully provides the key bullet points of Hart’s accomplishments as if to clear the decks before audiences get the actual answer. Blue Moon captures the death of an artist as only Linklater could by fixating on a moment perpendicular to Hart’s passing. Seven months before his collapse at just 48 years old, a single night at the famed Broadway haunt Sardi’s led to the devastating realization that both the culture and his collaborators had left him behind. Surrounded by portraits of the industry’s brightest talents, the space becomes like a mausoleum to Hart as he frets about how his legacy will inevitably be flattened like one of the restaurant’s famed line-drawing caricatures. It’s the opening night of Oklahoma!, for which Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), Hart’s former composing partner, has turned to the wordsmithing talents of Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Hart can sense the tide turning against him as the American musical theater moves in the more crowd-pleasing direction indicated by the new show’s exclamation-point-laden title. The embittered writer leaves before the curtain call and haunts the afterparty like a ghost. -Slant
“Mr. Hawke seems like the last actor you’d cast in this role, yet he delivers the performance of his career.” -Wall Street Journal