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Breaking up from the more prominent colleague in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the US, the 14th of November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in the land down under.