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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the US, November 14 in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.