DYING LIGHT (BLUE MOON)
It's about time Ethan Hawke landed an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
Twice nominated before in the supporting actor category, over the years he has delivered superb lead performances for directors like Ben Stiller, Sidney Lumet and Paul Schrader.
However it's his lead work with Richard Linklater that has really stood out - most notably in the 'Before' trilogy with Julie Delpy.
Hawke's first nomination in the category has finally come about working with Linklater on 'Blue Moon' - a biographical comedy drama about the American musical lyricist Lorenz Hart.
It's a superb performance of not so quiet desperation, with Linklater setting the mould for Hawke at the start of the film with a quote from Mabel Mercer that Hart was "the saddest man I knew".
We hear a radio newscaster also announcing Hart's death from pneumonia as we watch him slump in a drunken stupor in a New York alleyway during a torrential rainstorm.
Going back seven months before Hart's passing, Linklater and his screenwriter Robert Kaplow chronicle events in Broadway's Sardi's restaurant on the opening night in March 1943 of Rogers and Hammerstein's musical 'Oklahoma!'
Smarting that his former writing partner, Andrew Scott's Richard Rogers' is about to have the biggest hit of his career with first collaboration with Simon Delaney's Oscar Hammerstein II, Hart slips out of the theatre early to hold court in Sardi's bar with Bobby Cannavale's bartender Eddie and Jonah Lees' pianist Morty Rifkin.
Drinking heavily, Hart banters with Eddie about the brilliance of 'Casablanca' and also bitchily dismisses Hammerstein's "cornball" lyrics.
Mostly he waxes lyrical about a young protege, Margaret Qualley's aspiring set designer and writer, Elizabeth Weiland who he has the hots for but who clearly regards their relationship as platonic.
Explaining at great length how he intends to seduce her, when we eventually see them together they are a physical mismatch - she's much taller than him, young, blond and glamorous while he's middle aged, under five foot with a terrible combover.
Hart's desperation to connect with Elizabeth is only matched by his desperation to work with Rogers again.
However it doesn't take long at the post show party to understand why their creative partnership has drifted apart.
But how will his efforts to woo Elizabeth pan out?
Kaplow's screenplay is very theatrical and it's easy to see how Linklater's film could be performed as a play.
The action pretty much unfolds on the one set and there's plenty of scene chewing speeches for the cast, mostly for Hawke who delivers a garrulous, heartbreaking, intense lead performance.
Linklater is too skilled a director, though, to allow his movie to become a visually flat talkfest.
Along with his cinematographer Shane F Kelly, production designer Susie Cullen and costume designer Consolata Boyle, he creates a nostalgic, intimate and melancholic atmosphere that seeps through the film pretty quickly.
As the action unfolds, his film becomes increasingly more tragic as Hart's yearning for connection with Elizabeth and Richard Rogers intensifies.
And while Hawke's performance dominates proceedings, Scott, Qualley and Cannavale turn in astute supporting performances that arguably should have attracted more awards season attention.
Scott, in particular, captures the frustration of Rogers who would like to collaborate Hart again but believes it probably isn't worth all the effort because of his drinking.
Qualley is perfectly cast as the object of Hart's desire who you suspect sees him as a means to an end.
Cannavale's performance is the most generous of all the cast, grounding the film as a working Joe and providing the perfect foil for Hawke.
As the story unfolds, the scale of Hart's downfall magnifies to an extent that it's hard not to think of him as a fading, misguided figure living on past glories and hiding sexual secrets like Blanche Dubois.
Linklater and Kaplow deliberately reference 'Casablanca' at several moments in the film and with its tinkling piano and bartender, 'Blue Moon' certainly shares the same sense of intimacy as Michael Curtiz's romantic classic.
Lorenz Hart, though, is no Rick Blaine.
Nor is he Claude Rains' Captain Louis Renault.
If anything, he feels more like Peter Lorre's Signor Ugarte, constantly wheeling and dealing, living by his wits and ultimately doomed.
Imagine Ugarte in the lead role of 'Casablanca' and you're certainly in the right ballpark understanding Hawke's performance.
It's fully deserving of its place in the Oscar steeplechase and it leaves you yearning for another 'Before' collaboration between him, Linklater and Delpy.
Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?
('Blue Moon' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on November 28, 2025)
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