Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke delivers a charming, lived-in performance as Rodgers’ former collaborator, lyricist Lorenz Hart, an alcoholic and marginally closeted raconteur grappling with the fact that Rodgers’ biggest success now belongs to a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein.

As flowers and accolades pour into the restaurant, heralding a new era of American musicals, Hart holds court at the bar, regaling a plainspoken bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and a young, aspiring composer and military officer with stories. His current fixation is a 20-year-old Yale student, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), whom he reveres with a fervour that drifts between romantic longing and aesthetic worship.

Hart and Rodgers affectionately spar throughout the night, working through the regrets in their partnership and promising to start anew. Ultimately, through Hart’s reflections on love, art, and legacy, the film becomes a bittersweet elegy for his overshadowed place in musical history — a graceful tribute to the man behind Pal Joey, A Connecticut Yankee, “My Funny Valentine,” and the titular “Blue Moon.”

Directed by Richard Linklater