The Poppies of Terra #68 - Blue Moon Eclipse

Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), the Roman naturalist, believed that the Moon was able to affect human behavior by altering the moisture content of the brain, and Ptolemy (100–170 AD), the famous Greco-Roman scientist, wrote that “The moon, as the heavenly body nearest the earth, has the greatest influence on all human affairs.” Aristotle had made similar claims earlier. Othello, in the same-named play by Shakespeare, invokes the Moon in connection to his murderous actions: “It is the very error of the moon. She comes more nearer earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.” In his tenth feature film, Bugonia, a remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, Yorgos Lanthimos structures his black comedy around a forthcoming lunar eclipse. Teddy, brilliantly portrayed by Jesse Plemons, believes that in four days, when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow, an alien ship will be able to enter the Earth’s atmosphere unnoticed, and things will get very bad for humanity. Before this cosmic timer strikes, he wishes to negotiate for the retreat of the Andromedans. To this end, he and his cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), kidnap Michelle Fuller–another fantastic turn by two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone–, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, whom Teddy is convinced is one such Andromedan.

Fuller’s company is named Auxolith, an invented word derived from auxo-, meaning “to grow or increase,” and lithos, meaning “rock.” (The loose, dusty layer of soil and rock fragments on the Moon’s surface, for instance, is called regolith, where the rego- derives from the Greek for “rug” or “blanket”). This name already hints at Lanthimos’ absurdist comedic sensibility, because another word for “lith” is “stone.” Emma Stone’s corporation–which, according to its LinkedIn page, is focused on developing “cutting-edge treatments for some of the world’s most challenging health issues,”–is literally “the stone that grows.” Meanwhile, the film’s title, bugonia, refers to the ancient belief that bees spontaneously generate from decay. Teddy himself is a dedicated bee-keeper. Auxolith, a cold and unyielding for-profit entity is, according to Teddy, poisoning the environment, while his volunteer work with bees embodies a personal effort to ecologically restore the world’s fragile ecosystem. The power struggle between Teddy and Michelle, then, is not just a contest of two human wills, or, if Teddy is right, a fight between humanity and aliens, but also a competition of philosophies.

The close-quarters setup of the movie, in which a person is held and questioned by someone seeking a confession, is reminiscent of Death and the Maiden (1994), while the specific nature of the central question–is this character human or an alien?–recalls K-PAX (2001). Much of the film involves conversations between Teddy and Michelle in Teddy’s ramshackle farm house. Will Tracy’s screenplay gives these top-notch actors a wealth of notes to play with almost every line, and Lanthimos’ crisp direction keeps the momentum up throughout and precisely frames the rampant micro-emotions of both what’s stated and is not. The movie wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does if we didn’t believe in the setting, which James Price (Poor Things, The Iron Claw, Speak No Evil) richly texturizes through superb production design. There are more things in the shadows of Teddy’s basement than there are in the spotlight of most fictional homes. Oscar-nominee Robbie Ryan (Fish Tank, The Favourite, Poor Things, etc.) lenses the film beautifully, using the startling clarity of VistaVision to bring alive striking color compositions. During moments of high tension, composer Jerskin Fendrix scores the picture with the frenzied orchestral bombast of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie run through an insane asylum avant-garde filter, while at other times he works more delicately, blending wind instruments with synth washes and modern electronic dissonances. 

As Teddy and Michelle vie for the upper hand, we quickly realize that nothing said by one has the chance of changing the other’s mind. Funnily enough, this is the second time Plemons plays a character who distrusts Stone’s in a Lanthimos movie: in the second section of Kinds of Kindness, he torments her character as an impostor wife, testing her identity through cruel rituals. One partner accusing the other of deception is a core preoccupation in Lanthimos’ work, which is fascinated with eroded intimacies, such as in Dogtooth’s fabricated family realities or The Lobster’s forced couplings. Then, too, Teddy’s treatment of Michelle, which includes shaving her head, applying ointments, and demanding confessions, is in line with the dominance-submission games in Kinds of Kindness and The Favourite’s courtly manipulations. Lanthimos expertly stages asymmetric relationships that eloquently explore how authority (corporate, familial, romantic) is often linked with cruelty and obsession. The highly celebrated Poor Things relativizes moral truths, while The Killing of a Sacred Deer’s supernatural curse is disguised as a psychological trial. From Alps’ identity swaps to Kinds of Kindness’ revival cults and now Teddy’s Andromedan takeover beliefs, Lanthimos satirizes conspiracy culture while consistently questioning objective reality and undermining received truths. Paranoia erupts into truth, but a contingent, incomplete truth, ultimately sabotaged by our inability to escape our own self-destructive impulses. As such, Lanthimos may be our foremost cinematic misanthropic satirist. If anyone’s an extraterrestrial here, commenting on things from the outside, it could be him. 

American lyricist Lorenz Hart, the protagonist of Richard Linklater’s twenty-fourth feature, Blue Moon (he also has Nouvelle Vague out this year), is also an outsider, in his case reluctantly so. Hart used to be on the inside and very much in the spotlight. We soon learn that over the course of nearly a quarter-century of successful collaborations with composer Richard Rodgers he permeated popular entertainment. But changing tastes, and his own increasingly worse tendencies towards dissipation and procrastination, have resulted in Rodgers moving on to a new creative partner, one Oscar Hammerstein II. 

Like Bugonia, Blue Moon is an adult, heavily dialogue-driven narrative, one whose snappy cadences partially recalls movies made during the time it’s set. This movie is even more spatiotemporally confined than Lanthimos’, as it unfolds entirely at Sardi's restaurant during the evening of March 31, 1943. It’s an auspicious day, as it marks the premiere of the wildly successful Oklahoma!, a big hit for Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose success Hart gets to observe from the sidelines. 

The film rests almost wholly on the deliberately hunched shoulders of Ethan Hawke, and he carries it comfortably, dynamically playing a complex character who is by turns affable, raconteurish, prickly, relatable, detached, elegiac, self-pitying, arrogant, self-deprecating, pedantic, generous, and tender. I knew very little about Hart and Rodgers going in, and I’m happy to know a little less little now. That’s one of the genuine pleasures of well-crafted, historically-informed cinema: to expose us to, and educate us on, the lives of interesting people whose stories we would likely, in the absence of a compelling dramatic framework, never take the time to investigate on our own. In a manner befitting the elegance and sophistication of the polished Manhattan Theater District restaurant and bar in which it unfolds, Blue Moon deals with grief. A life well lived is not necessarily a life whose passing is unmourned, and the erosion of one’s creative success, whether through alcoholism, a gradually worsening misalignment with the interests of the general public, or a combination of both, makes for a poignant study in loss. The film tells us at the outset that Hart will not live on much past the events we witness, which comes both as a shock, given he’s only in his forties, and as confirmation of the shrinking spirit we see so well portrayed by Hawke. It’s not only Hart’s career that’s on the downturn, as his romantic life, including a currently unrequited love, has led to repeatedly rejected marriage proposals and unfulfilled longings. It’s easy to root for Hart and sympathize with his plight. Thanks to the great on-screen work by the supporting cast, which includes the fabulous Andrew Scott as Rodgers, it’s also easy to see how things are going wrong for Hart, and how much of that is his own doing.

As with Bugonia, place becomes character in Blue Moon, and kudos should go to Susie Cullen’s (Abigail, The Drop) thoughtful production design, along with Shane F. Kelly’s (A Scanner Darkly, Boyhood) sleek cinematography. Graham Reynold’s piano-driven score is a pitch-perfect accompaniment to the visuals and conversations. If there’s a central mood to Blue Moon, it is, aptly for its title, melancholy. Hart’s real-time introspection brings to mind Linklater’s classic Before trilogy, with its discursive hyper-verbal approach to love and aging, as well as Boyhood’s chronicle of life’s lilts and shifts, all underscoring Linklater's fascination with how moments crystallize stories. Hart’s imperiled partnership with Rodgers also evokes the theater ensemble dynamics of Me and Orson Welles and the evolving band tensions in School of Rock, highlighting a recurring exploration of art’s communal joys and isolating sacrifices. There’s also continuity with earlier entries in the director’s filmography, as the all-night confessions of Dazed and Confused and Waking Life’s dreamlike conversations reinforce a career-long trust in the ability for unhurried exchanges, and even soliloquies, to reveal inner fragilities.

While the box-office has had its share of struggles and disappointments in 2025, these two films are a welcome reminder that smart, ambitious projects continue to get greenlit and shown in theaters. In their respective ways, both of these movies reach their destination with poise and confidence. That’s no small feat considering that, artistically speaking, they’re shooting for the moon.