Berlinale 2025 – Blue Moon ★★★

Released: Later in 2025

Director: Richard Linklater

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley

Lorenz Hart is not the kind of figure you’d expect to find at the heart of a Richard Linklater film. Known for his naturalistic approach as both director and writer, some of his most beloved works – such as Boyhood and the Before trilogy – revolve around everyday conversations and existential meditations. But Blue Moon is a different beast, and one of Linklater’s most stagey and claustrophobic films to date – much more aligned with Me and Orson Welles (2008), based on a novel by Blue Moon’s screenwriter, Robert Kaplow.

Blue Moon is a well-written but uneven character study – and biopic – of the great American lyricist Lorenz Hart, played by Ethan Hawke. The film opens with two contrasting epigraphs: Oscar Hammerstein remembers Hart as “alert and dynamic and fun to be around,” while cabaret singer Mabel Mercer describes him as “the saddest man I ever knew.” As the story unfolds, both prove to be true.

First, we see Hart in his final weeks, collapsing in the street, devastated by drink. We are then transported back to six months earlier, where the rest of the film takes place – more or less in real-time – over the course of a single night: on March 31, 1943. At legendary New York bar Sardi’s, Hart drowns his sorrows as his former song writing partner Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott) celebrates the opening night of Oklahoma! with his new collaborator, Hammerstein. Rogers and Hammerstein are on the verge of reshaping musical theatre forever, while Hart – the man behind “Blue Moon,” “Bewitched,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” and “Manhattan” – is unemployed, alcoholic, desperate and depressed.

Kaplow’s screenplay captures the complexity of the 1940s Broadway scene, digging into the fraught personal and professional dynamics between Hart and Rogers. Unable to let go of the past, Hart rambles through memories of lost loves, career highs, and personal failures. He reveals his ambiguous sexuality, Rodgers’ growing mistrust of him, and his newest infatuation, Yale fine arts student Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), 27 years his junior. The script is rich with sharp references and nods to classic Hollywood – references to Casablanca and a host of 1940s musicals – but this isn’t enough to carry a film that ultimately falls short of its potential.

Hawke’s intriguing performance, while compelling, often feels disconnected from the emotional core of the story. It can feel too theatrical, undercutting the raw vulnerability needed to fully immerse us in Hart’s tragedy. Scott and Qualley both deliver strong performances, but their limited screen time prevents them from leaving a lasting impact. Meanwhile, Linklater’s decision to ‘shrink’ Hawke to emphasize Hart’s short stature – through oversized costumes and forced-perspective camera trickery – is just distracting; a gimmick that further heightens the film’s artificiality.

Blue Moon is a story of personal and professional downfall that embraces its theatrical nature but struggles to translate that intensity to the screen. It has moments of poignancy, but doesn’t fully capture the emotional depth it’s striving for – a surprising disappointment from a filmmaker who has built an impressive filmography on the naturalism that Blue Moon seems to lack.