By Jason Osiasion

Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon feels like a filmmaker returning home. It’s Linklater’s most focused and emotionally charged work in years, unfolding over a single chaotic night behind the curtain of Oklahoma!’s Broadway debut. What begins as backstage frenzy turns into a sharp, funny, and deeply human character study of lyricist Lorenz Hart’s unraveling as fame, insecurity, and heartbreak collide.

Ethan Hawke gives one of his most commanding performances of his career in its volatile and magnetic nature. He totally disappears into legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart. A genius demised by his own alcoholism. Hawke’s voice impressively drenched in liquor and regret, firing off monologues that swing from spite to self-pity to desperate longing for Margaret Qualley’s character, who embodies both muse and emotional escape. It’s the kind of performance that could have easily tipped into something overly theatrical, but it never does. There’s a surprising lived-in quality to it, balancing exhaustion with a crackle of electricity.

Andrew Scott, as composer Richard Rodgers of Oklahoma! fame, matches him beat for beat. His crisp composure and effortless charm provide a perfect counterpoint to Hawke’s chaos. Scott’s 1940s American accent is so natural you almost forget he’s not from that world. The film itself plays like a chamber piece: talky, intimate, and steeped in gorgeous melancholy. Linklater shoots it with the warmth, rhyme, and pulse of live theater. Every scene dances on its showy dialogue, yet carries a steady rhythmic tension, as we watch the self-destruction, pity party spiral of a once brilliant man.

Blue Moon might be small in scale, but it’s bursting with life. It’s entertaining, old-school in the best ways, and proof that Linklater can still pull magic out of time long ago. This is exactly the kind of film that deserves to find its audience and the kind of discovery that makes film festivals matter. [A-]