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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a performance duo is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also at times filmed standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in Australia.