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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also at times filmed positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us something rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

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