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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a performance partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times shot positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the bar at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of a factor infrequently explored in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the land down under.