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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a entertainment double act is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of something rarely touched on in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the USA, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in Australia.