Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke’s latest collaboration ignites with a fizzling intensity of emotion, whiskey, and unfulfilled desire.
Richard Linklater’s latest work, Blue Moon, is one more film of a string of the eponymous director’s movies to have premiered at Berlinale. His relationship with the festival dates back to Before Sunset, which screened at Berlin in 2004, and of course famously starred the magnificent Ethan Hawke.
The cinematic duo have returned, working together on their latest film Blue Moon, this time taking us back all the way to a night in New York in 1943. The film unfolds over 100 minutes, a chamber piece and a musical drama, verging on the claustrophobic with the density of the script and the closeness of the one set location; a fizzling intensity of emotion, whiskey and unfulfilled desire.
Hawke plays songwriter Lorenz Hart, an alcoholic romantic known for genre defining hits such as My Funny Valentine, Blue Moon and Isn’t It Romantic. Hart has, however, failed to sustain his career due to an irritating temperament and a passionate pull to drink; he is at once tormented, verbose, and devastatingly enigmatic.
Hart drinks his way through a torturous evening at Sardi’s Bar, watching as his songwriting partner Richard Rogers (played by Andrew Scott) celebrates a fantastic reception to the opening night of Oklahoma! – a musical written not with Hart, but with Rogers’s new partner, Oscar Hammerstein (Simon Delaney). Rogers and Hammerstein would, of course, go on to shape the course of musical theatre forever, with the story of Rogers and Hart getting little attention – until now.
A man of incredible contradictions, Hart is at once unbelievably confident and terribly insecure, the happiest man in the room and devastatingly depressive. He waxes lyrical about his recent infatuation with Elizabeth Weiland (played by Margaret Qualley), a 20 year old college student he has apparently fallen in love with. We are left wondering, however, whether Hart is more in love with the idea of being in love, or potentially, with being in an unrequited love affair. As Linklater stated at the press conference, he – potentially like his character – finds unrequited love a far more interesting subject, or at least more creatively productive, than that which is requited. It’s more poignant, more long lasting, Linklater commented. In fact, a number of Linklater’s films deal with this theme, the results often pulling at audience’s heartstrings.
Rogers and Harts’ creative partnership, the notion of unfulfilled love and the devastating rise and fall of fame and success fuel this movie, underpinned by a truly stand out script (screenplay by Robert Kaplow). During the press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Hawke emphasised the significance for him of artistic friendships, explaining how fulfilling and long lasting those relationships can be. This is reflected as an aside in the film, where Hart advises a younger man at the bar to focus on friendships, not romantic love, as friendships are far more enduring; ‘Some of the biggest loves of our lives are friendships.’
Hopefully Hawke and Linklaters’ own creative friendship will continue for a long time to come, bringing us more philosophically and cinematically challenging films that ceaselessly push at the boundaries of what cinema is, and what it could be.
Film Fest Report is an accredited media at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
