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Separating from the more famous partner in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the film imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about something seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who would create the tunes?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.