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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a risky business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also occasionally filmed positioned in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of something seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on the 29th of January in Australia.