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Parting ways from the more prominent colleague in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also occasionally shot positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on October 17 in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on January 29 in Australia.