Hear Me Out: Richard Linklater’s ‘Blue Moon’ is better than a Fourth ‘Before’ film
Before Midnight was a perfect conclusion to one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time, and there was no need for Richard Linklater to expand the story with an unnecessary fourth entry; however, his newest collaboration with Ethan Hawke has turned out to be a deeper and more rewarding study on ageing and loss.
In terms of trilogies, there’s usually a clear order of quality where not each entry is equally successful, the biggest instance of which is the legacy tainting third part of The Godfather films, or the Return of the Jedi, which even the most hardcore Star Wars fans can admit isn’t quite as strong as A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Sure, Richard Linklater’s darling indie Before trilogy didn’t have the epic scope of The Lord of the Rings or Back to the Future, but it’s a rare franchise that grew more emotional and creative with each instalment.
Before Sunrise wasn’t as much an announcement for the Dazed and Confused director as much as it was a sign that he had matured; the 1995 romantic drama caught Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy at the perfect moment in their careers, and the naturalistic rhythms of their conversations made the sun-drenched 90 minutes go by like a flash. Hollywood would do itself a lot of favours if it learned to not mess with perfection, but Linklater returned to the characters twice with its two sequels, Before Sunset and Before Midnight.
The nine-year gaps in between them gave him and Hawke (who became co-writer) the opportunity to address three very different stages in a relationship: there’s a brief spark of affection, a more thorough commitment, and then a fraught period of potential schism, with Before Midnight managing to end the story on an ambiguous note, reflecting the profundity of a normal life interspersed by serendipity. Thus, as successful as it was with fans clamouring for more, upon realising that testing the waters with another sequel would have been a risky move, Hawke and Linklater smartly chose to direct their attention elsewhere.
Granted that while the actor and director’s relationship expands beyond the trilogy, where, in addition to spending over a decade filming Boyhood together, the pair have teamed up on The Newton Boys, Tape, Fast Food Nation, and Waking Life, their latest collaboration, Blue Moon, speaks to the theatre geeks within them both.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were a legendary musical duo responsible for some of the most recognisable song-and-dance numbers of the 20th century, but the story of songwriter Lorenz Hart is much less pleasant. Hart, the former partner of Rodgers, descended into alcoholism towards the end of his career, and never got the chance to write his planned masterwork, and while Hawke doesn’t look anything like the real Hart, Blue Moon finds a sneaky way to get around that fact, thanks to some clever staging techniques and makeup effects, transforming the actor into the diminutive, balding Broadway legend.
Blue Moon tells the story of a man whose work was lost to time, which wasn’t possible within a franchise as specific as the Before trilogy. Although spending three films over 20 years with a character as caustic as Hart may have been unbearable, Blue Moon makes for an entertaining 90 minutes because of its tragic undertones.
Hawke may have retained the snappy line delivery he had as Jesse in the Before series, but Blue Moon gave him the chance to be fatalistic, aggressive, and unsparingly cynical. With its intimate setting and monologue-heavy script, the film has the realism of live theatre and can be deemed a more appropriate use of Hawke and Linklater’s efforts than a return to a franchise that had already met its natural conclusion.
