Blue Moon (5/10)

by Tony Medley

100 minutes.

R.

Inspired by the letters of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) and Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), this tells of one fabricated night in Hart’s life. Hart, a lifelong drunk, is sitting in the bar at Sardi’s on the night of the opening of the Rodgers & Hammerstein hit, Oklahoma! waiting for the after-party for opening night to start. He is bemoaning his life to the bartender, Eddie (Bobby Cannavale), who reminds me of the robot bartender (Michael Sheen) in Passengers (2016), a movie I really liked, but came and went without much effect. In fact, although Hart did attend the opening of Oklahoma! he did not attend the after-party.

This pictures the apparently bi-sexual Hart as not only an unsympathetic drunk (although at this point he is apparently sort of on the wagon), but a hypocrite as well. He demeans Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) and the play itself to the bartender but when they appear he is a sniveling sycophant to them both while singing high praises for the play.

This is directed by Richard Linklater (written by Robert Kaplow), whose trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013) were all disappointing to me, although received raves from others. Linkater did, however, make one of the best movies I’ve seen this century, Me and Orson Welles (2008). So, I approached this with wariness.

Rodgers & Hart wrote some memorable musicals with good songs in addition to Blue Moon, like My Funny Valentine, The Lady is a Tramp, Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, Lover, There’s a Small Hotel, With a Song in My Heart, the list is long. But the only music in the film consists of Morty (Jonah Lee) playing snippets of some Rodgers and Hart songs on the Sardi’s piano as background while conversing with Hart and Eddie.

But something this film doesn’t tell is that Rodgers had originally asked Hart if he wanted to participate in turning the 1930 stage play Green Grow the Lilacs, upon which Oklahoma! is based, into a musical. Hart declined, so Hammerstein, who had recently ended his relationship with Jerome Kern, was enthusiastic when Rodgers approached him with the idea. Hart dismissed the attraction of the story and, also, had become dysfunctional due to his alcoholism and unreliability.

So for more than an hour and a half we have to sit and watch Hart bemoan his life and others.

There have been other films consisting mostly of conversation, the two best being My Dinner with Andre (1981) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). But both of those had spellbinding dialogue. Not so here. Rather than spellbinding, this is tedious, despite a good performance by Hawke, who, at 5-10, portrays the barely five-footer Hart by looking up at everyone. To exacerbate the tedium, the last 15 minutes is taken up by his 20-year-old girl friend, Elizabeth, with whom he apparently has an unconsummated relationship, telling him a long sad story about one of her romances. What does this have to do with the talented lyricist Lorenz Hart? Zzzzzz.

Rodgers & Hart wrote some great songs. It’s a shame that someone would make a movie about the lyricist without highlighting some of the songs he wrote instead of concentrating on making him look like an obnoxious, unappreciative, unsympathetic, self-pitying nudnik. Maybe that's what he was, but he did coordinate with Rodgers to write some lovable music that should live forever.