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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.