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Separating from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment duo is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes recorded positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about something rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.