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Separating from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment partnership is a risky affair. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times shot positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the break, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.