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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment duo is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with boys – 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 authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.