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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

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