Heartland: Blue Moon

"Blue Moon" boasts the best performance of Ethan Hawke's storied career.

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Some directors and actors have a working relationship that’s just unimpeachable and they keep going back to the well together because the proof’s in the pudding.

Some names that jump to mind – John Ford and John Wayne, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, Tony Scott and Denzel Washington, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy.

I think at this point you’d have to add Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke to this list and maybe even put ‘em at the top of it. The duo’s ninth film together is “Blue Moon” and it’s one of their best to date.

Hawke stars as troubled lyricist Lorenz Hart – one half of the famed songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart alongside Richard Rodgers (the ever-dependable Andrew Scott). The duo have parted ways creatively after a quarter century of working together due to Hart’s incessant drinking and erratic behavior.

It’s March 31, 1943 and Rodgers’ latest production – a little show you might’ve heard of called “Oklahoma!” – is premiering on Broadway. It’s his first project with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) and looks to be a smash.

Hart, thinking it’s a load of hogwash, leaves the show early and begins badmouthing it to anyone who’ll listen over at Sardis – where the after-party is taking place. His audience consists of a bartender named Eddie (the very funny Bobby Cannavale), a GI on leave whom Hart’s nicknamed Knuckles (Jonah Lees) who’s making a couple extra bucks tickling the ivories and renowned essayist and children’s book author E.B. White (an inspired Patrick Kennedy).

Hart has bigger fish to fry than “Oklahoma!” as he’s soon going to be in the presence of Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley, another winning performance in a string of ‘em), a Yale coed who’s his protégé and with whom he’s obsessed despite their age difference (he’s 47; she’s 20) and his homosexuality.

I honestly think this is the best performance of Hawke’s career and will be shocked and disappointed if he isn’t given serious awards consideration come year’s end. Matching the genius of Hawke’s performance at every turn is the razor-sharp script from Robert Kaplow, a retired high school film studies and English teacher from New Jersey, whose novel “Me and Orson Welles” was previously adapted by Linklater. Kaplow’s writing deftly mixes the painful and profane – it’s one of the year’s best screenplays and also worthy of serious awards love.

“Blue Moon” is very much a hangout movie and a movie that feels as if it could’ve been a play – two types of movies that Linklater has made many times throughout his career and at which he excels. Linklater, his cast and crew are soaring here, folks.