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Separating from the better-known partner in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Prior to the interval, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the numbers?

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