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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by 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 wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, 14 November in the Britain and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.