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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a performance double act is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But 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 further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

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