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Separating from the better-known colleague in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the Australian continent.