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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times filmed positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants 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 promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of something rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the USA, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.