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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky business. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot placed in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie envisions the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the intermission, 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! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the USA, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.