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Separating from the better-known partner in a entertainment partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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