Ever since he hit the scene with Slacker (1990), Richard Linklater has been one of the pioneering voices of independent film within his generation. Almost every time out, he was creating art that redefined Gen-X culture and developed one of the greatest film catalogs about the subject of time. Even Christopher Nolan and his blackboards of notes can’t compare to the way Linklater makes you feel the passage of hours and years. He’s created one of the most exciting romances in a trilogy that, in total, only encapsulates three days. He made the final day of high school feel momentous. Even the way he turned Boyhood (2014) into a 12-year exploration of early 21st-century youth is bound to produce some emotion in you.
Linklater, to me, has fallen into a bit of a slump period in the time since Boyhood. He hasn’t been short of ideas, but the “spark” that bestows his best work hasn’t been there. He’s still as conscientious of time as ever in works like Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) and Apollo 10 ½: A Space Childhood (2022), but something has felt missing. His innovation hasn’t found a new idea worth locking onto and really exploring the mechanics for why we should care. Given how much I loathed Nouvelle Vague (2025) and consider it one of his creative nadirs, my concern for his other celebrity biopic for the year was enough to overshadow how acclaimed Ethan Hawke was getting for his third Oscar acting nomination, and first in a lead role.
In short, I didn’t expect Blue Moon (2025) to impress me as much as it did. I was so indifferent to Lorenz Hart’s legacy that I had assumed he was the same subject as the musical Till the Clouds Roll By (1946). That was Jerome Kern, who, from that film’s presentation, lived a more ceremonious life than Hart. Both worked with figures central to the famous collaborators Rodgers & Hammerstein, whose names are both synonymous with pioneering the American musical. A major difference is that Kern & Hammerstein produced masterpieces like Show Boat, while I’ve mostly heard Rodgers & Hart songs through cabaret performances from people like Davis Gaines. Hart has a noteworthy place in theater history, but it’s hard to see people of my generation latching onto Babes In Arms or Pal Joey with the same enthusiasm. At most, he’s become a forgotten legend, a figure who was already disappearing by the time Linklater lifts the curtain on his story.
Like Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night (2024), I suggest approaching this with some skepticism for accuracy. This is best viewed as an amalgamation or, in the spirit of Hart, closer to a stage show that blurs the boundaries between biography and delusion, creating a perfect portrait of a legacy that has triumphant highs and self-defeating lows. Every time it seems like Hart has become the wounded puppy, he’ll deflect with a nasty retort to hide his pain. He’s the type to gossip about how Oklahoma! is a terrible show with hack lyricism to his bartender before turning around and telling his friend and former collaborator that he’s got a hit on his hands.
Hart is a man of contradiction, and one of the most endearing portraits an American music biopic has explored in many years. Outside of the egregious choice to open this story by showing his grisly demise, this movie is a compassionate return to form for Linklater. The exploration of time doesn’t seem obvious, mostly confined to one location and an evening that unequivocally will change everybody’s lives. For Rodgers & Hammerstein, it will be the moment their populous art inspires a new form of entertainment. The presence of a young and precocious Stephen Sondheim alludes to the next generation who will push things into more experimental directions and challenge the blueprint they created. The overwhelming level of name recognition, including Patrick Kennedy as the author E.B. White on the verge of his own career reinvention, is enough to make you realize how quickly the protagonist is fading.
The best biopics not only “tell” a story. They also “feel” the protagonist. Basically, there’s something implicit about the production that feels singular to that subject’s work. In the case of Lorenz Hart, it’s easy to write him off as the sad sack that screenwriter Robert Kaplow envisions him to be. A lot of his “flowery” language is that of a gay man who was beaten down by time talking to a bartender who functions more as a springboard than an actual companion. For most of the film, Hart initiates conversation, telling people what he thinks they should believe. There’s no objective pushback. At most, the viewer is led to question if his late-night cruising at this bar is closer to a drunken delirium or more a coping mechanism for his loneliness.
For as much as it works to develop internal concepts, it also shows his external insecurity swallowing him whole. Initial talk of his relationships comes with a brash overtone that feels designed to shock, as if humor is the only way he can capture anyone’s attention. Despite being a recognized legend within Blue Moon, Linklater creates periods where Hart is an unpleasant fool who seems to be tossed aside because of his own addictions and ego. Even still, the wrinkle is that his disdain for Oklahoma! may very well be nothing more than jealousy of a hot new art form that he’s not part of. The title refers to one of his big hits, a melancholy ballad that is brought up a few times, with each sounding more nostalgic than the last.
Along with the dreamlike bar setting, Linklater has ultimately turned to Hart’s greatest form of expression, the stage, and allowed him to be a figurative actor in his own life story. Given how poorly he expresses himself in situations of sincere conversation, it makes sense to exist within a world where every detail feels slightly fantastical, down to his comparatively minuscule posture compared to every other cast member. Without a censor or collaborator, Blue Moon begins as his chance to tell whatever story he wants… and it’s easily interpreted as being only for himself. Even as the real world of Oklahoma!’s after party rushes in, it’s hard for him not to retreat to the one place he is still adored.
Linklater’s masterstroke is having the story function as a ticking clock. Hart watching a production of Oklahoma! may as well be the acknowledgment that a bomb will go off by the end. What Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has to offer is far more appealing than the camp that Hart attempts to insert into his work. There’s tragedy in hindsight, where the audience knows how wrong he is, that even if they don’t like Oklahoma!, it remains objectively popular enough to warrant revivals as recently as a Tony-winning production in 2019. Still, Kaplow places him somewhere between a sympathetic, hopeful, and a victim of his own hubris, whose past behavior has taken away chances at redemption. He has a win by the end, but it’s minor compared to the cultural cache that Rodgers & Hammerstein would have in the same window.
A lot of credit must be given to Hawke for turning in one of the best performances of 2025. Along with managing to appear small within the frame, his wide-eyed glance captures a perfect mix of enthusiasm and desperation. He’s most confident when he’s alone with the bartender, able to flirt up a storm. Even then, it’s unclear how much is reciprocated or even real. The genuine detachment allows those glances into the lobby to feel more painful, where he depicts the greater insecurities of his peers moving on without him. His ability to stumble through a conversation like a salesman losing his client has a magnetic cadence, capturing a man with recognizable humanity that is endearing at first blush. But is he a trustworthy man? While at times his bloviation feels reminiscent of Truman Capote-level gossip, it’s a form of duality that is helping him work through the crisis, hoping that somebody in the echelon will chuckle.
Like the best of Linklater, this works because of his unassuming eye towards Hart. Whereas Nouvelle Vague lacked any true insight into Jean-Luc Godard, Blue Moon goes beyond stating its talking points. It demystifies Hart by making him feel more recognizable. It strips the triumphs away and instead focuses on his emotional core, asking what he hoped to get out of the theater while executing that with vibrant focus. It’s there in the way it conscientiously feels like time is passing away, as delirium gives way to a ghost story where Hart will forever be haunting that bar. No matter what, better choices are out there; these are the ones he’ll defend, for they have gotten him this far.
Indeed, Lorenz Hart will never be forgotten in music history. There are enough performers who love the classic balladry with which he wrote. Those sincere moments shine through and make the audience realize the potential beyond the broken man. If he wrote “Blue Moon” once, he could do it again. There’s something in him capable of making a hit. But will it be enough against Oklahoma! and a collaborator who has moved on? What is a world where he is alone, lost in reputation both by his peers and history? Maybe there were kinder ways to give Hart his due, but Linklater and Kaplow have seemingly done something more innovative and fresh. They’ve given him the style to express himself in all of his vulnerabilities. Again, it’s unclear how truthful it all is, but neither are playwrights nor drunks. This is about the best anyone could hope for getting an answer from anyone.
Blue Moon shouldn’t work. On the surface, it is a play that calls attention to its constructs. The themes are stated, and some of the staging feels like it draws neon signs to itself. And yet, everything comes together to reflect how Linklater thinks Hart feels. In a world where biopics struggle to place some of pop culture’s most memorable figures in cinematic amber, it’s nice to have a film that challenges structure and embraces the curiosity of a man with a contradictory lifestyle, whose flaws are what make him sympathetic. The Hart of Blue Moon deserves to be more than a crowd pleaser. He wouldn’t complain about an exclamation point title as much if that weren’t the case. In doing so, he reveals himself to be a man out of time, desperate to find his way back into the frame. This isn’t the full story, but it’s close enough.
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