Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon features a luminous ensemble and arguably a career-high performance from Ethan Hawke, yet it’s hobbled by an aesthetic gamble so distracting, so patently absurd, that it nearly sinks the enterprise.
Hawke plays Lorenz “Larry” Hart, the brilliant, self-destructive lyricist behind My Funny Valentine, Bewitched and the wistful song of the title, and he does so with extraordinary commitment: wide-eyed, jittery, enthralled, embittered and heartbreakingly exposed.
It’s the kind of turn that should anchor a film. Instead it’s upstaged by Linklater’s obsessive attempts to shrink his leading man to Hart’s purported sub-five-foot stature.
The forced-perspective blocking never lets up. Hawke sits lower than everyone at the bar, lurks beneath oversized suits, stares up noses from inhuman angles and wanders through what look like studio trenches. A rare wide shot in the men’s room practically transports us to Munchkin-flanked overture of The Wizard of Oz. Cinematic history has survived much looser height casting; why this story demands such contortions is never clear.
Christy review: Sydney Sweeney packs a punch as seminal figure in women’s boxing
Blue Moon review: Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott make performances to remember
Udo Kier, German actor who starred in classic horror films, dies aged 81
Four new films to see this week: Wicked – For Good, Testimony, Jay Kelly, The Thing With Feathers
That’s especially frustrating because Blue Moon, at its best, captures the melancholy allure of a vanished Broadway. Set almost entirely over a night at Sardi’s, the theatreland pit stop, as Hart circles the premiere of Oklahoma! and the looming, rapturous verdict of the New York Times, the film whisks in Hart’s old songwriting partner Richard Rodgers (a poignantly patient Andrew Scott, who deservedly won a Silver Bear for his performance) and his affable new collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney).
Bobby Cannavale’s bartender cracks dirty jokes and lends an ear while Hart moons over his new “muse”, Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley). She is not, it transpires, as guileless and wonderful as her besotted admirer supposes.
Robert Kaplow’s lively, sometimes daringly smutty period dialogue is occasionally upstaged by historical shoehorning. The script is not improved by an origin story for Stuart Little, the character created by the writer EB White, and an improbable introduction to Stephen Sondheim as a boy. Still, Hawke’s wounded bravado met by Scott’s tolerant firmness is an encounter to remember.
In cinemas from Friday, November 28th
