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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally filmed placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture imagines Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of something seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

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