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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment partnership is a risky business. Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times shot positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona fabricated 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 Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the numbers?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.