🔗 Share this article

Separating from the more famous collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times recorded standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the Australian continent.