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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also at times recorded placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

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