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Separating from the more famous colleague in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us something infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on October 17 in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in Australia.