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Blue Moon (2025)
Director: Richard Linklater
If anyone says he does not feel happy after being complimented on his work, he is probably not telling the truth. It is human nature to feel warm, good feelings inside when you take baby steps, and your mother jumps with joy when you come home with a medal after a race or when you ace a public examination with flying colours.
In modern times, one gets the same 'serotonin surges' whenever someone 'likes' one's post on social media. The trouble is, this environment turns us into Pavlov's dogs. We constantly yearn for validation and recognition. We lose self-confidence and need others to tell us we are on the right track. We demand constant attention. The real world has no time for us. And they are fickle-minded. We shrivel into our cocoon, feeling dejected and yearning to ease the pain.
The Beatles must have felt it. The constant expectation to churn out chart-toppers must have pushed them towards drugs, the Maharishi and Eastern mysticism in search of creative expansion. The razzmatazz of superstardom turned the Man into a plastic-surgery-addicted, modern-day Peter Pan who needed propofol to get a good night's sleep.
That is what fame does to a person. The pressure to stay on top drives a man down the rabbit hole of decadence and self-destruction.
Blue Moon recounts a low point in the life of Lorenz Hart, once a prolific songwriter who collaborated with Richard Rodgers. It was the opening night of the Broadway show ‘Oklahoma!’, for which Hart had refused to write the songs, and Rodgers had taken the project with Oscar Hammerstein II.
Rodgers’ previous collaboration with Hart was marred by Hart’s battle with depression and alcohol. In his heyday, Hart was praised as a fantastic poet and a genius songwriter.
‘Oklahoma!’ proved a runaway success and would become the starting point of Broadway’s greatest partnership.
The film tells the sad tale of a genius struggling with the bottle, soliloquising about his great talents and reliving his glory days in the company of a pianist and a bartender. He is hanging by a thread, reminiscing about the time when his audience hung on his every word.
He tells the bartender of his intention to woo a 20-year-old student, only to find she has other plans. At the end of the night, he meets his former partner, Rodgers, in an emotional encounter, and they both know their collaboration is over. Later, Hart, who had stayed sober for some time, takes his first drink again. Seven months later, Hart is found slumped by the road, drunk in the freezing cold, and succumbs to pneumonia.
Ethan Hawke, who gave a stellar performance in the leading role, is unrecognisable. He was later nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards.
Farouk Gulsara (asokansham@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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