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Separating from the more prominent partner in a performance duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film tells us about an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the songs?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the USA, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in Australia.