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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz double act is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us something seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.