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Breaking up from the more famous partner in a entertainment duo is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also occasionally shot placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.