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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a performance double act is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his ego in the form of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the film conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

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