Culture
‘Blue Moon’ breaks biopic conventions to cast an enchanting spell
By: Gordon Briggs
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What a charming movie Blue Moon is.
I’ve been hesitant to watch many new biopics.
Despite their best intentions, many of them feel like sanitized stories that often smooth down the rougher edges of their subjects. Thankfully, Blue Moon goes in a different direction. The result is a film that is funny, witty, and melancholic all at once.
It may be set in one place, and consists mainly of one man talking, but within 10 minutes of this movie, I was won over by its main character and wanted to listen to his stories all night.
Here, while the stage musical Oklahoma! opens to raves, lyricist Lorenz Hart reminisces, nurtures another hopeless crush, and confronts his shattered self-confidence in a bar as his former collaborator, Richard Rodgers celebrates success.
What I admire about this narrative choice is its focus. So many biopics attempt a “cradle to grave” approach that tries to cover their subject’s entire life from childhood to death. Blue Moon focuses on a single night in this man’s life and uses that night to explore Lorenz Hart’s fears, regrets, and desires.
Furthermore, unlike other biopics that often focus on career highs, Blue Moon centers on Hart’s lowest point: a time when his former partner, Richard Rodgers, is achieving massive success with a new collaborator, and Hart is lacking a professional future.
Secondly, I loved this dialogue.
True to its lead character, the movie highlights Hart’s smarts through a clever use of wordplay. As Hart muses about musical theater and the burdens of being creative, the writing balances witty banter with notes of pessimism about its subjects’ personal and professional disappointments.
For instance, the exchanges between him and his “love interest” (played effectively by Margaret Qualley) have a rhythm and wit to them that’s both informative and fun to listen to.
Of course, I cannot leave out Ethan Hawke. Yes, his performance does feel like a performance sometimes, but the actor brings real touches of melancholy to this character.
Typical of director Richard Linklater’s themes of time, memory, and the intersection of art and life, Hawke took a name I was familiar with and turned him into a living, breathing, and yearning person before my eyes.
Rating: ★ ★★ ½