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Breaking up from the more famous partner in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the US, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in Australia.