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Parting ways from the more famous collaborator in a entertainment double act is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally shot positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the appearance of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in films about the domain of theater music or the films: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the songs?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in Australia.