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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a entertainment duo is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.