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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a risky business. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

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