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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a performance duo is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.