Sydney Film Festival 2025 - Blue Moon

 “How can you know my name but not know any of my songs?” 

Melancholic, longing and museful, Blue Moon spends an evening with the incomparable Lorenz Hart played sublimely by Ethan Hawke on the eve of his former creative partner’s greatest success as he pontificates and ponders on life, legacy and love amidst ego, sorrow and loss with a screenplay full of playful verse and poignant rhythm. 

Discussion Points:

A truly unique Richard Linklater “hang-out” movie which has us spending an evening with the diminutive in stature yet larger than life in personality Lorenz Hart on the eve of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s smash opening of Oklahoma! With his creative partner about to surpass him, Hart - full of unbridled ego and personality can’t help but try and make the evening about himself through subtle ways as he strikes up conversations with the staff and other clients about his young muse Elizabeth and his personal disdain for the new hit musical. But as the celebration mounts, it becomes clear that maybe this will be Hart’s finale. Ethan Hawke is absolutely brilliant playing the longing pining lovelorn Lorenz even in his most pitiful moments as he regales his previous accomplishments and  teases his fellow bar patrons. In smaller roles, Andrew Scott, Patrick Kennedy, Bobby Cannavale and Margaret Qualley enter his orbit and provide further spark to his evening as he lyrically toys with them in playful verse. It’s a masterful chamber piece that allows ample room for the screenplay to breathe and its characters to inhabit the warmly lit evening establishment. One of Linklater’s most self-contained yet richly crafted works that examines not only the singular life of one iconic lyricist, but that speaks into the hearts of all those who long to know others and be known in return.