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Separating from the more famous partner in a entertainment partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally filmed placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Prior to the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture reveals to us something infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

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