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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

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