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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment duo is a dangerous business. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes shot placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

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’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us something seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, the 14th of November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.