🔗 Share this article

Breaking up from the better-known collaborator in a performance duo is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

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