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Breaking up from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment double act is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture informs us of something rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

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