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Breaking up from the more famous partner in a entertainment partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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