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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz duo is a risky affair. Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film occurs, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on October 17 in the United States, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in the Australian continent.