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Separating from the more prominent partner in a showbiz partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes shot standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to praise Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

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