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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky business. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in stature – but is also at times filmed placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie reveals to us something infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is released on October 17 in the US, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the land down under.